LANGUAGE VARIATION DUE TO GENDER A Practical Approach

RAUSHAN KUMAR (1301046)

IIIT GUWAHATI

1. Introduction

Differences in the ways that men and women use language have long been of interest

In the study of linguistics.

Do the men and women who speak a particular language use it in different ways? If they do than

one need to answer the questions like

Why men and women speak language differently and how?

What type of differences in language use by men and women?

Are they meant for it?

Is there any specified category for men and women both?

Are they trying to make difference between them?

Thus there are so many questions that cross into our mind like these.

There are so many reasons for language change but gender is one of a kind. Every day we

observe people to use different type of language.

It is quite fascinating to find out why and how men and women speak language differently.

I tried to find out why and how language changes due to gender and in this term paper I am

going to discuss some of the aspects of my observation. For my purpose I talked some of my

family members and college friends. I asked these people very simple questions and made my

conclusion according to their answers so that anyone can relate the theory with their practical

life.

2. Gender and Sex:

Before going to depth I just want to clear the differences between sex and gender. Anthony

Giddens (1989: 158) defines “sex” as “biological or anatomical differences between men and

women,” whereas “gender” “concerns the psychological, social and cultural differences between

males and females”.

Sex is to a very large extent biologically determined whereas gender is a social construct. Gender

it is part of the way in which societies are ordered around us (Wardhaugh, 2006:315)

3. Linguistics gender research background:

The investigation of gender-specific language variation started in the 1960 but Early

studies on language and gender usually considered the language or speech behavior of

women in terms of a deficiency model, that is, they considered the speech behavior of

men as stronger, more prestigious, and more desirable.

Labov(1966) was the first to notice the important role of sex/gender as a sociolinguistic

variable with his study on MARTHA'S VINEYARD and his NEW YORK study. In these

studies Labov considered sex as one of the factor. To explain socio-phonological

variation he used the concept of “prestige,” to prove his points

1. Variation: Women use more standard variants than their equivalent men.

2. Hypercorrection: Women hypercorrect their language compare to equivalent men.

Labov did not go much deeper to study about language variation due to gender but

Trudgill (1972) did. He works within a framework similar to that of Labov, but he got a

stronger emphasis on sociological reasons to account for the observed gender-specific

difference in language variation.

Trudgill (1972: 91) states: “The social position of women in our society is less secure

than that of men … It may be … that it is more necessary for women to secure and signal

their social status linguistically.” Furthermore men are judged according to their work,

yet women are assessed according to their appearance, which includes language.

After Trudgill James and Lesley Milroy (1980, 1981) came up with the more specific

explanation of the language variation due to gender. The key idea was to observe men

and women language in their social group. Milroy got a conclusion that .Female

linguistic behaviors are more tolerable compared to men mostly, so that women have

more linguistic freedom than men and women’s style is standard and men’s style is not

standard.

In the second decade of linguistic gender studies, research in linguistics and

communication sciences investigated differences in the speech behavior of men and

women, resulting in a situational ranking of the sexes.(coulmas, 1985)

In the next phase, emphasis was put on research on gender socialization. There is an

extensive literature showing that boys and girls learn different verbal and nonverbal skills

in their mainly same sex children's and peer groups. These skills remain relevant for

adults in many situations.

The differences in subcultures and socialization processes were emphasized yet the

power aspect seems to have been neglected.

Most recently, social constructivist have been taken into account. In this approach,

gender is understood as an indirectly developed identity category, integrated into the

formation of other identity categories.

4. Language Change

So far we have seen that so many linguists have taken this topic as their research interest

and found out some important conclusions. In this section we will see how to relate those

conclusion with the real practice. Mainly in this section we are going to see practical

common analysis of conceptual theories. In this section one can get satisfactory reasons

of language change due to gender.

4.1Due to Biological Difference: Explanations of the difference in sound frequencies using the difference in men and

women vocal tract. Anyhow stress is the important factor in cultural transformation and

language change.

Few researchers also think that there is a biological cause of the observed language

variation. For example Chambers (1992) thinks that “women have a better ability to learn

languages and will therefore show more variation”.

My Observation

For example I asked to one of my college male friend about mess menu and the same

thing I asked to a female friend. I noticed the difference in style of speaking and

explaining the mess menu. To be very frank I came to a conclusion that women explain

worst thing in such a polite way so that it would not seem that much worst that it was

before.In other way my male friend explained the mess menu in such a way that I cannot

eat the food even I am so much hungry. One of the reason for this difference is because

of their differences in voice(comparative softness in voice)

4.2 Due to Mentality: Male and female have different personal culture just because they see the world

differently. No doubt they will use their method of explanation differently according to

their assumption and coordinates (position). In general men and women develop a

mentality while they are growing that one has to speak according to their kind. It simply

means that men have to speak differently from women so that they can they belongs to

the two different culture.

The status of men is derived from their occupation. Women who mostly work at home

have to use symbolic systems including language to demonstrate their status (Eckert,

1989).

Milroy (1981) said male peer groups exert strong pressure on their members to use the

vernacular and the most satisfactory reason for this is given by Lippi-Green (1989) he

said that men exert strong pressure on their members to use of the vernacular is due to

their tendency to delimit themselves from women.

My observation

To verify the truth and generality in this two cultural approach I asked again same

question to my IIITG college friends in which some of them are male and some are of

course female. I asked them “If you get two day of holiday and you have no college work

pending then what will you do?”

Most of the male friends used offensive words to me and said this is not possible but

when I forced to say something than most of male friends said that they will enjoy a lot

by playing games, watching various TV series( like “Game Of Thrones” , “The Big Bang

Theory”) and breaking sleeping records. On the other side female friends became happy

when I asked the same question and they replied that they will first of clean the rooms

and cloths, talk to parents more than they usually do, read a novel of SIDNEY

SHELDON. Some answers were common in both that to visit a hill station near to

Guwahati.

After my this observation I came to the following points:

1. Male talk differently with male and female friends.

2. Female talk differently with male and female friends.

3. Male talk more in their favorable topic (like playing LAN gaming).

4. Female think much before talking to any of the topic.

5. Male don’t think so much about the perception made by questioner but female think

about this very much. They (female) tell only those things so that the questioner

cannot make any negative attitude about them. As

6. Male and female both used different set of vocabulary for example men use more

Slang in compare with women (In my observation). Because women think that if they

use slangs then they will make a negative picture of their view.

Finally I can say that men and women think differently because of their mentality to

show their ability and gender.

4.3 Due to occupation Nichols (1983) said that “the different occupations of men and women lead to a different

exposure to other language varieties. Female’s jobs are often further away from their own

community and entail more contact with other people than do those of men, who share

their workplace with members of the same speech community (factories). This leads to

the higher language proficiency of women, better control of more registers and styles,

and an orientation to supra-regional language norms”

My observation

To verify language due to occupation of male and female I again did a social experiment.

I asked same question to my sister (housewife) and an IIITG college girl. The question

was: “ what if I give you 100 bucks now with the condition that you have to spent all

with in an hour?” As expected I noticed vary different answers from both of them.

One of them said that she will buy a dish wash soap, a surf excel , a headache balm, and a

dairy milk.

Where other one said that she will simply recharge her mobile to activate internet pack

for making English term paper.

You can simply make a clear conclusion that which answer is made by which one. Yes

first answer was of housewife and other one is of IIITG girl.

Thus we can simply see that occupation make a vast difference in using language. As in

one side the house wife used the household words (surf, soap) and college girl used some

technical words.

Ok, here I made the conclusion to compare women of different occupation. In the similar

way I asked the same question to my brother (bank employee) and as expected he

answers differently.

4.4 Due to dominance: Deuchar (1990) said that Female usage of the standard language is intended as a means of

improving their own inferior position in a patriarchal society The weaker a woman's

position, the more she is forced to be polite.

My observation

To examine the difference due to dominance in language use by men and women I

observed My mother and father. My mother is a housewife and father is working man.

I called them and asked for 1000 rupees.

Father said “why do you need money every time? What will you do? If you need

anything than tell me”. On the other side mother replied “ beta if you need money then

don’t worry I will ask your father.”

With this example we can clearly see that if the women is depending on men then she use

language according to that where if the men is not depending on women then he don’t

care about anything and answer according to his own view.

Due to native language: When we were child we don’t care how and what we speak. But after growing up people

expect from us to maintain some standard of language speaking with different

circumstances. What language we speak that reflects our world around us. As my native

langusge is Khari Boli Hindi and I will explain my point by taking two sentences in my

native language and the same in English.

Girl : mai ja rahi hu. (I am going.)

Boy: mai ja rha hu. (I am going.) One can clearly see the difference in both the line. Yes, in English there is no difference

in language due to gender but in Hindi there is a difference. I mean to say by reading or

listing these sentences one can easily identify the gender of speaker.

In Sanskrit also there is no difference due to gender like in English. And Hindi has been

expected to come from Sanskrit. So this leads to the major question that from where

people of Hindi speaker adopted this gender identifying mode of language. Nevertheless

The reason for this change would be mentality of Hindi speaker that they want to

differentiate male from female. In other way it reflects that if you are speaker of this type

of language than you are habituated to make difference in male and female language. If

you have this type of habit then no maters which language you learn and speak you will

defiantly make change in your current language according to your habit.

I mean to say if we learn from childhood to make difference in male and female then in

every language we will try to maintain the gap of male and female in terms of language.

5. Final Conclusion My analyses demonstrate small but systematic differences in the way that men and

women use language, both in terms of what they say and how they choose to say it. As I

have explained the early views in my beginning of the term paper that Lobov and

Trudgill had examined about language variation due to gender and after that so many

other Linguists came and examined the same thing in different manner but with different

observation. In my view how we see the world that is important only. And from where

we learn how to see the world? Yes definitely from our parents, society, education,

scientists and so on.

From childhood people make us learn to make difference in man and women with their

different theories and perceptions. Due to biological differences we not only identify the

difference between men and women, so we also commit to behave according to that.

We develop a different mentality about gender and we speak in society according to it.

As I have observed with my college friends we speak whatever we think and our

occupation plays an important role in our thinking. For an example a student and teacher

will think differently. So they will talk differently. Thus according to occupation of men

and women they have different ideas in mind and so they talk differently. We have also

observed that due to power and dominance of men and women language also varies. The

main idea is to observe psychology in men and women mind related to language. I mainly

discussed points that change psychology in human brain related to their language.

I have made my conclusions.

6. Bibliography

" The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Coulmas, Florian

(http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/tocnode)

Holmes (1995), women, men and politeness. London: Longman.

Gender Differences in Language Use:An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples

Matthew L. Newman ,Carla J. Groom, Lori D. Handelman Oxford University Press New York

Communicating Gender (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999).

Wardhaugh, R. (2006), “An introduction to sociolinguistics”.

Lakoff, R.(2004), “Language and Woman’s Place” , Oxford University press.