gender-specific common nouns: sex differences in self-use

Sex Roles, Vol. 18, Nos. 3/4, 1988

Gender-Specific C o m m o n Nouns: Sex

Differences in Self-Use 1

Katherine M. Slama 2 and Betty J. Slowey University of South Dakota

Males and females completed questionnaires on self-esteem and on their use, applied to themselves, o f (a) girl/boy, (b) gal/guy, (c) lady/gentleman, and (d) woman/man in 10 situations. Terms chosen did not vary with self-esteem or with psychiatric vs nonpsychiatric status. Older subjects preferred lady/gentleman and woman/man. Females seldom chose gal, and used it less often than males used guy. Both sexes chose girl /boy most in negative situations. Females used girl more than males used boy in self-praise situations. Females preferred both sexes to think o f them as ladies. Males preferred females to think o f them as gentlemen and thought that term most complimentary, but preferred males to think o f them as men. These results are discussed in terms o f societal sex roles.

Research has shown that language affects people's reactions to one another, that sexes use langauge differently, and that language affects the sexes differently (Henley & Thorne, 1977). Henley and Thorne state, "To understand the importance of linguistic sexism, we must understand the important role language plays in influencing our thoughts and acts through naming, defin- ing, describing, and ignoring" (p. 202).

Several studies have explored gender-specific common nouns as applied to females. Brannon (1978) found that someone described as a girl was rated less favorably as a job applicant than a woman. Hamilton, Wong- McCarthy, Henley, DeVillers, Kelly, and Armentrout (1983) failed to repli-

~The authors wish to thank Gary Leonardson, Ph.D., and Nancy Henley, Ph.D., for their aid in completing this study.

2To whom reprint requests should be addressed at Department of Psychiatry, University of South Dakota, Box 76, Yankton, South Dakota 57078.

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0360-0025/88/0200-0205506.00/0 © 1988 Plenum Publishing Corporation

206 Slama and Slowey

cate Brannon's results, but concluded that we need to know more about the use of English referents for females.

An interesting report by McCarthy, Hamilton, Leaper, Pader, Rush- brook, and Henley (1985) used woman, girl, and lady in vignettes varied along the dimensions of age, status, familiarity, and whether talking to or about the female. They found that lady was employed for older females of unequal status or who were causally known, and concluded that this term may represent a kind of false homage. They found that woman was used for young females of high status and that girl was used for young females of low status, or for high status if the young female was unfamiliar.

In the same report, these authors carried out semantic differential rat- ings on the three terms and found that woman was rated most favorably except on traditionally feminine traits, where lady was rated most favorably. Girl was rated inferior on all 15 of their dimensions. They concluded that woman is the address form of choice for addressees who want to be paid respect.

The purpose of the research described in this paper was to explore differences between the feminine and masculine form of four corresponding gender- specific common nouns as applied to oneself. Hypotheses were that the deno- tatively corresponding terms would be used differently by males and females, and that their use would vary with the self-esteem of the respondent.

METHOD

The first sample of subjects was taken from psychiatric patients over the age of 18 who resided on mixed-sex acute treatment units in a state men- tal institution. The other sample consisted of people in a shopping center, where each person who agreed to participate was matched within one year for sex, age, and education with someone in the psychiatric sample. The ex- perimenters made it clear to all subjects that participation was voluntary and, in the case of the patients, was not part of their treatment, and that cooper- ation or refusal would not in any way affect their treatment. The 32 males had a mean average of 32.3 years and their education averaged 12.8 years, while the 46 females had a mean age of 33.7 years and 13.0 mean years of school. Subjects were almost solely Caucasian from an upper Midwestern state. The psychiatric sample was employed to ensure variability in self-esteem and to determine whether psychiatric patients differ from the general popu- lation in the use of gender-specific common nouns.

Subjects were asked to answer two written questionnaires. The first questionnaire, the Self-Esteem Inventory adapted by Henley, Gruber, & Lerner (1985) from Coopersmith (1967), assessed attitudes toward the self in the

Gender-Specific Common Nouns 207

domains of family, social environment, self-acceptance, and anxiety-asser- tiveness. The authors of this study developed the second questionnaire to determine which terms women and men apply to themselves in 10 different situations.

The gender-specific common nouns chosen for use in the study were those with corresponding forms in both genders that are in common use: Girl/boy, gal/guy, lady/gentleman, and woman/man. The situations employed were (a) feeling good or unhappy about something you've done, (b) stating preferences for the terms that same-sex and opposite-sex persons use for you, (c) being pleased or displeased with your part in an interaction, (d) feeling attractive or unattractive, and (e) judging the most and the least complimentary terms.

RESULTS

There were no significant differences between males and females on the self-esteem measure, nor did self-esteem show a significant effect on any of the gender terminology questions. The only significant differences in self- esteem were between the normal and psychiatric populations, with the latter scoring lower (F = 38.82, p < .001). The difference between the psychiatric and normal female populations was greater than the difference between psychiatric and normal males (F = 14.93, p < .001).

The gender terms chosen were related to subjects' age; when ranking of terms in order of a feminist perspective (1, girl~boy; 2, gal/guy; 3, lady~gentleman; and 4, woman~man) are treated as interval data, the corre- lations between the resulting gender terminology total over 10 questions with age were .54 in females (p < .001) and .34 in males (19 < .06). However, there were no significant differences between the normal and psychiatric populations on X2S in any gender terminology question, so these two groups were combined within sexes for the following analyses.

On 6 of the 10 gender terminology questions, the x 2 was significant. Table I shows the results of items grouped together as the self-praise questions. In answer to "When you feel good about something you've done, what term are you most likely to use to praise yourself?", females used girl and woman more often and gal less often than males used corresponding terms. Females answered girl more often and gal less often than males answered with corresponding terms to, "When you are pleased with a recent interaction, which of the following terms are you most likely to use in congratulating yourself?" To the question, "When you feel attractive, which of these terms are you most likely to use in thinking of yourself?", females answered woman more often than males answered man, but this difference was not signifi-


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cant. Equally few females and males chose the girl~boy and gal/guy options to this question. Only lady/gentleman drew no differential response within this set of self-praise items.

Three gender terminology questions may be grouped together as prefer- ence items (Table II)" (a) What term do you prefer that (opposite sex) use to think of you? (b) How do you prefer other (same sex) to think of you? (c) Which of these terms do you think is most complimentary? To each question, girl/boy was an equally low frequency response in both sexes, and females chose gal far less often than males chose guy. Females were remarkably consistent across the three questions; 57-59% of them chose lady and 24-35% of them chose woman as answers to each question. Men were less consistent across the questions, tending to chose gentleman as the term they think most complimentary and prefer females to use, but preferring that males use man.

Three of the four negative items in the gender terminology questionnaire (Table III) showed no significant effects: (a) When you are unhappy with the results of something you've tried to do, how are you most likely to think of yourself? (b) When you're displeased with a recent interaction, which of the following terms are you most likely to use in your resulting self- statements? (c) When you feel unatractive, which of these terms are you most likely to use in thinking of yourself? Only the question, "Which of these terms do you think least complimentary?" showed sigriificant differences, with more females choosing gal and males choosing boy. Few subjects of either sex chose lady/gentleman or woman/man as least complimentary.

DISCUSSION

In general, older subjects were more likely to employ formal and adult terms such as lady/gentleman and woman/man. It appears that growing older, or growing up in different times, may change people's application of gender-specific common nouns to themselves.

There were many differences between sexes in the use of corresponding gender nouns. Females seldom used gal in positive situations and thought it the least complimentary of the available terms. Males employed guy twice as often as females employed gal and six times as often in positive situations. It appears that these two terms may not be entirely equivalent in their con- notations in situations in which people apply them to themselves; gal seems much more negative for females than guy does for males. These two terms also correspond less well with each other, for there are informal contexts in which guy can refer to females as well as to males, for example, "Hey guys, let's go!" or "I have to be the bad guy." That gal has a more sexually specific reference may explain why females prefer to avoid it.


An interesting sex difference in the use of girl~boy occurred in the self- praise items. Females chose girl three to six times as often as males chose boy. However, females still only used girl 20-22% of the time in self-praise situations, compared to 28-43% of negative situations. Apparently, females say both "good girl!" and "bad girl!" to themselves, while males say only "bad boy!" This is consistent with the finding that more than twice as many males thought boy was the least complimentary term as was the corresponding case for females. A possible explanation for females' greater use of girl may be in our culture's socialization processes, which tend to continue to infantilize females throughout their life span. For males, on the other hand, immaturity is less culturally acceptable, making boy a term of relative dis- approval, except perhaps in approved "boyish" activities such as athletics.

It is unclear why males preferred other males to think of them as men while they preferred females to think of them as gentlemen and considered this term most complimentary. Perhaps it is part of our culture's masculine role to defend against more formal and complimentary language from other males. Alternately, our culture's remmants of a code of male chivalry may dictate more politeness with the opposite sex than with the same sex.

Self-esteem was not related to differential application of gender-related common nouns to oneself. This might seem inconsistent with Henley et al.'s (1985) findings that the generic masculine pronoun differentially affected the self-esteem of the reader. However, this study investigated nouns rather than pronouns, which are different grammatically. The nouns were gender-specific, making them semantically and symbolically different in many respects from Henley's gender-nonspecific pronouns. Furthermore, Henley's subjects were students of several ages, while subjects in this study were recruited from adult populations. These subjects were from the upper Midwest, while hers were from California. Last, the pronouns in Henley's study applied to a fictitious person, while the nouns in this study applied to the subject. Further research may clarify the areas in which langauge affects self-esteem differently across sex.

Other questions are raised by the results of this study. How would the gender noun answers change if the questions applied to others rather than to oneself? Would choosing subjects for egalitarian beliefs vs traditional beliefs about sex roles change the results? Would they change with different subject populations by region of the country, race, or sexual orientation? In what other situations would similar results be found? Would research em- ploying semantic differential methods yield different results for masculine vs feminine common nouns? We need to clarify the parameters determining differences in the use of these nouns, as well as to explore the effects of these differences.


R E F E R E N C E S

Brannon, R. The consequences o f sexist language. Presented at the annual meeting of the ~Arneri- can Psychological Association, New York City, August 1978.

Coopersmith, S. The antecedents o f self-esteem. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1967. Hamilton, M., Wong-McCarthy, W. J., Henley, N. M., DeVillers, L., Kelly, E., & Armen-

trout, R. Consequences o f sexist language revisited. Presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Anaheim, CA, August 1983.

Henley, N., & Thorne, B. Womanspeak and manspeak: Sex differences and sexism in communi- cation, verbal and nonverbal. In A. Sargent (ed.), Beyond sex roles. St. Paul, MN: West, 1977.

Henley, N. M., Gruber, B., & Lerner, L. Studies on the detrimental effects o f "generic" masculine usage. Paper presented at the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, March 1985.

McCarthy, W. J., Hamilton, M., Leaper, C., Pader, E., Rushbrook, S., & Henley, N. Social influences on what to call her: "Woman, " "girl, " or "lady. " Presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Anaheim, CA, August 1985.

gender-specific common nouns: sex differences in self-use

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