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Language, Gender And Feminism

Language, Gender and Feminism

 

Introduction

    Speaking language is one of the most important characteristics of human beings; Joseph (2006) argues that “Disagreement is a natural for human beings as speaking is”. Thus, like all animals human beings consists of male and female. The relation between male and female and social constructed of them is called Gender. Gender does not something we acquire once and for all at an early stage of our life, but an ongoing accomplishment produced by our repeated actions (Cameron. 2005). Most of researchers believe that language and gender related to the association between language and the concepts which we have about men and women and how men and women use language in social contexts, Cameron (2005) suggests that the activities that women and men participate in and how they participate are introduced a clear image about the relationship of language to gender. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between language and gender in terms of the differences between women and men in conversational practice.  

The differences between women and men in conversational practice.

     Women and men are different in their way of interacting and communicating. It relies on many aspects for instance, how old they are, are they men or women, where they live and what they learnt….etc, but the main reason to communicate in different ways is related to the gender. Talking about the differences between men and women in conversational practice is very wide, so I will narrow it up by discussing the following concepts: women and powerful language, women and communicative competence, and Women and politeness.

Women and powerful language:

     Language works as an essential tool, which people use to express, controlling and also altering the power relations (O’Barr, 1984), and it is obvious that language is the main reason which all claims of gendered difference rely on. It is difficult to define women’s language as a powerful or powerless language, but the common sense indicates that women’s language tends to be powerless and men’s language is powerful. Some linguists believe that women are aware of their low status in society, thus, men who have the power, consequently “Women’s language developed as a way of surviving and even flourishing without control over economic, physical or social reality” (Lakoff, 1990 cited in UTS online). Cameron (1985) characterize women’s language as disfluency, statements couched as questions, speaking less than men in mixed group, unfinished sentence, not ordered logically and using co-operative strategies in conversation. All these features of women’s language indicate that women’s language is powerless and weak, since no one of these characteristics gives any sense of power or positive meaning, whereas all of them indicate to a weak and negative meaning. Cameron argues that Feminists themselves tend to characterize the linguistics features of women’s language as powerless and deferent, so they believe that men force women to learn the powerless speech style, and“Women are not entirely free to develop their own subcultural norms, because the femininity they are socialized into and seek to express is to a large extent male defined” (p. 52). People’s convictions are depend on their status in the society, for in stance a black women who was born in Africa in working class has a very different life experience from a white man who was born in London in upper class, therefore with such different experience comes different knowledge, opportunities, views of the world and also ways of speech (Eckert & McCconnell-Ginet, 2003). Holmes (2001) claims that the way that women and men use language in each society is different and it reflecting social status or power differences in that society, thus if the society is a hierarchical and men are more powerful than women in each level of the hierarchy, so the difference between women and men speech is the most remarkable difference which reflects the whole social hierarchy. On the other hand, Coates (2004) argues that gender is the essential reason beyond the women’s powerless language rather than status or position, she claims that many studies suggest that even when women where in a position of power like female doctors or women bosses, their language characterized as a powerless because of gender. Moreover, attributing the differences between men language and women to the differences in vowel quality an pitch between women and men are not exactly right, but culturally “anything that marks as female becomes a cause for complain and a proof of inferiorly” (Cameron, 1985).

Women and communicative competence:

    Many studies indicate that women and men are different in communicative competence, thus they are different in their use of conversational strategies (Coates, 2004). There are many conversational strategies show the differences between women and men in their communicative competence; therefore I will concentrate on some aspects of conversational practice: tag question, command and directive and Hedges.

Tag questions: According to Lakoff (1975) tag question is a syntax usage using between an outright statement and a yes-no question. She claims that women tend to use tag questions with intonation at the end of declarative sentences is an indication to the lack of self confidence, for example (“the weather is very nice, isn’t it?”). Therefore, using tag question with intonation inappropriately indicates to weakness, inferiority and woman class (p. 52). Crawford (1995) argues that women use tag question to “convey uncertainty and lack of conviction”. On the other hand, Coates (2004) claims that one of the linguistics usage features which related to the women is using tag question, so she argues that women use tag question more than men, especially when they are participants in the interactions like, interviewers on radio and television, teachers and discussion group leaders. Moreover, Coates mentions that preisler’s (1986) research tells that by comparing between using tag question and other linguistics forms like some modals, we will find that women use tag question more than men.

Command and directive: while women and men are interacting with each other, they use many ways to express, so in their conversations they alter between using suggestion, arguing, asking, wondering, commanding, discussion…ect. Coates (2004) defines the directive speech as a “speech act”, where the speaker always tries to get the addressee to do something. In this sense, Women tend to use ‘mitigated’ directive, so they always soft in there speech even in directive speech, whereas men use ‘aggravated’ directive, especially to show the “status differences between themselves”, thus men speech always heavy, harsh and serious (p. 95). According to poynton (1985), women realize commands incongruently by using interrogative clause, such as using modalised, for example (“could you please close the window”)  or declarative clause like (“I wonder if you could be so kind as to close the window”) and they also use commands less than men do. On the other hand, she claims that men use to realize commands “congruently by means of the mood choice imperative” (p. 71).

Hedges: Coates (2004) defined hedges as a linguistics forms reflect the speaker’s certainty or uncertainty about the current situation. Using hedges such as (sort of, you know and I think) are related to the women rather than men, because always women speech characterizes as “tentative” (Coates, 2004). According to Lakoff (1975) speakers use hedges when they “lack self-confidence”, and she claims that women use hedges more than men, because “they are socialized to believe that asserting themselves strongly isn’t nice or ladylike, or even feminine” (p. 75). Brown claims that “using apologizes for intruding; uses impersonal structure and hedges found where people are in an inferior position in the society” (Brown, cited in Coates 2004). Moreover, Coates explains that when the speech is about sensitive affairs like personal issues, using hedges is a precious resource to reduce the force of speech, so she claims that in contrast with women, men always avoid talking in personal issues as women do.

Women and politeness:

Politeness is to respect the speech of the person you are talking to and avoid to hurt his feelings or upset him (Mills, 2003). According to Holmes (2001) to be polite person is to make people feel comfortable, she also defined the polite person in linguistics notion as one who speak to the other people in a way which suitable and parallel with his relation with them. Mills (2003) claims that Politeness is the practices which communities develop and improve, and where people within these communities participate in, so they will be able to judge their behavior and other’s behavior, and also their status in the community, so politeness does not a feature of speech or a choice that speakers can use it.

Nancy Bonvillain in "Language, Culture, and Communication" argues that women’s language is more polite than men, and they loosely speaking with respect to the others whom listen to them. According to Thanasoulas (1999), women do not use strong expletives, such as (damn or shit), they might use less strong words such as (oh dear fudge). Brown claims that women in the common sense use more polite language than men; she suggests that women among women tend to use polite language more than men do among men (Brown cited in Mills 2003, p. 207). Thus, women’s linguistics behavior is described as being concerned with cooperative and avoidance of conflict in contrast with men’s linguistics behavior (Mills 2003, p. 2003).Brown (1998) The linguistics markers of politeness indicate to the social relationship between the participants in the interaction, so when women use more polite language than men, women either treat men as socially superior or as socially distant, or “women are involved in more face threatening acts” (Brown.1998, cited in Coates. 2004, p. 105).

Some of the Sociolinguistics find out that community satisfy polite speech from women than from men. The reason beyond such point view that, Men in the point view of most communities all over the world, suitable to be forward and empower to manage the affairs of others, in contrast, women's speech has depreciated and ignored from the community.Women’s polite language can be use in many public contexts, but it will face the society labeling that women’s language is weak or powerless. (Holmes. 1995, cited in Coates. 2004, p. 105)

Over the history, women had played minor part in communities in comparison with the men role, so it has been supposed from women to behave like lady, show appreciate to others and show the low position being required to appreciate the superior. Brown claims that “it is reasonable for women to speak more politely, because women are culturally isolated to a secondary status relative to men and because politeness is expected from inferior to superior (Brown cited in Mills 2003, p. 208). Thus, in most societies who has the power can speak politely and who is powerless should be polite, so in this point view, the use of language politely indicates to the differences in social power.

 

Conclusion

    In this paper I have discussed the relation between language and gender in terms of the differences between women and men in conversational practice, the discussion so far indicates that women and men are different in the interactive styles, because of physical, cultural and social reasons. Accordingly women’s language characterize as a powerless language, more polite than men’s language, mitigated, lack of confident and tentative, whereas men’s language is powerful, aggravated, less polite than women’s language and confident.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Cameron, D. 1985, Feminism and Linguistic theory, the Macmillan Press, London.

 

Cameron, D. 2005, Language, gender and sexuality: Current issues and new directions. Applied Linguistics, 26(4), p.p 482-502 

http://drr.lib.uts.edu.au/file/12969/013369_cameronlanguage.pdf

 

Coates, J. 2004, Women, men and language: a sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language, Pearson Education,New York.

 

Crawford, M. 1995, Talking difference on Gender and Language, SAGE, London.

 

Eckert, P & McConnell-Ginet, S. 2003, Language and Gender, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom.

 

Holmes, J. 2001, An Introduction to Sociolinguistic, Pearson education, London.

 

Joseph, J. 2006, How politics permeates language (and vice versa). Chapter 1 language and Politics Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

 

Lakoff, R. 1975, Language and woman’s Place, Harper & Row, New York.

 

Mills, S. 2003, Gender and politeness, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom.

 

More Gender Speech Issues. 1997, viewed 15 September 2009, http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/socioling/gender2.html

 

O’Barr, W, M. 1984, Asking the right question about Language and Power, in Kramarae, C., Schulz, M & O’Barr, W, M (eds.), Language and Power, SAGE publications, Beverly Hills, London, New Delhi, pp. 280- 260.

 

Politeness and Gender. 1997, viewed 15 September 2009, http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/socioling/gender.html

 

Poynton, C. 1985, Language and Gender: making the Difference, Deakin University, Victoria 3217.

 

Thanasoulas, D., 1999, ‘why can’t a woman be more like a man’, Language and Sex. Viewed 15 September 2009,

 http://www.englishclub.com/tefl-articles/language-sex.htm

UTS ONLINE, viewed 10 September 2009,

https://online.uts.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=/webapps/blackboard/execute/launcher?type=Course&id=_7204_1&url;=

 

What is Gender?, International Telecommunication Union, viewed 04 September 2009,

 http://www.itu.int/gender/about/gender.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

Does listening and watching people speak a language make it easier to pick up said language?

I sometimes watch hispanic channels and take the language in school. Does seeing others speak it and listening to it help you pick the language up easier?

I have taught myself to speak spanish simply from working with Latinos.I never took spanish in school. My spanish is not perfect but I visit a small town in Mx and no one there speaks english, I was able to get anything I needed. So yes it works.

Speak The Language - Jazz Liberatorz Ft. Lizz Fields