Tugas: Language and Sex

Language and Sex

The study of correlation between the use of language and "the structure of society" forms the core of sociolinguistics which also accounts for the points such as "the context and manner of the interaction" (in a market, house, church ; loudly or whispering), "the relationship between speaker and addressee" (close friends, employer-employee, mother-child) and "the social backgrounds of the speaker and addressee" (sex, age, social class,etc.) (Radford, et.al, 1999:16). Moreover, relying on the information it gives about the third person above, sociolinguistics demonstrates that the language use of most people shows variance and gender is one of the key determiners of this linguistic variation. Before explaining what gender is, it would be useful to understand the relevance between sex and gender. 

Sex is a biological class. All human beings are differentiated as males and females with respect to the biological basis, in fact, not only human beings but also criterions, duties and expectations in all cultures differentiate. Thus, these different norms creates a great diversity between men and women in the way of experiencing life  

SEXISM IN LANGUAGE
Sexism in language refers to the concept of whether language discriminates against women in its lexicon and in its use (grammar). While giving the explanation of the sexism in language, a question rises in our minds: Is a language`s being sexist dependent upon its discrimination among sexes or is it the society who uses the language as the symbol of sexism? Through this part, we will find the answer. As for the relationship between language use and sex and gender, it can be said that language may reflect and maintain social attitudes towards men and women. To support this view Crystal (1987) indicates that language sets up a "male-oriantated view" of the world and incites sexual bias which causes disparagement of the part which women take in society. This discrimination is seen in its grammar and lexicon.

Throughout this part, we will examine the gender differentiation in use and vocabulary; moreover, find the efforts to remove the sexist behaviour from the language itself.

In Grammar
The most apparent reflection of the discrimination in language is obviously seen in grammar. The problem is originated from lacking sex-neutral use of third person singular pronoun in English. In that view, generic `he` can be dealed in two perspectives with respect to gender bias and formality.

In terms of gender bias, the use of indefinite pronouns such as anyone and everyone procreates the problem. Although these pronouns refer to both sexes, the pronoun `he`, coined by prescriptivists, is used after these indefinite pronouns in the sentences, regardless `he` is the masculine pronoun. For example; Everyone left his seats after the bomb denouncement. In that sentence both `everyone` and `his` refer to both men and women.

Secondly, in the sense of formality, the third person singular pronoun is used with respect to the level of formality. In the formal standard English, we use `he` and its forms when the antecedant is an indefinite pronoun. Though their reference is plural they behave as singulars in the formal uses. For example; Everyone is responsible for his own duties. In that sentence, both the verb and the subject are singulars. Whereas, in informal spoken English, the third person plural pronoun `they`, which does not have a gender mark, is used. As an illustration; Everyone is responsible for their own duties. Yet, prescriptivists oppose this kind of uses, since a singular antecedant should be followed by a singular pronoun.

The sex-marked pronouns were not used ýn sýxteenth and seventeenth centurýes as the "generýc terms"; 'he' was used to refer to men and the pronoun 'she' for women. If the referent was sýngular 'they' refered to both sexes. By the eýghteenth century 'he' and ýts forms were used as the general term accordýng to the rule proposed by the prescrýptývýst grammarýans (Fromkýn and Rodman, 1993:309).

To avoýd thýs sexýst use of pronouns, some proposals are made such as the use of both 'he' and 'she' and theýr ýnflected forms ýn a sentence: Everyone left hýs and her seats after the bomb denouncement, or the use of plural antecedant and 'they' : All left theýr seats after the bomb denouncement. The other proposals represented by Crystal (1987) and Trask (1995) for replacýng the sex-marked pronoun 'he' and ýts forms are " herm, han (comýng from Fýnnýsh), tey, co, E, ne, thon, mon, heesh, ho, hesh, et, hýr, jhe, na, per, xe, po, and person". These proposals could take no place but only "co, na and per" has been used by some novelýsts.

This differentiation is seen not only in English but also in German and French with the use of 'der-die-das' and 'le-la'.

  In Lexicon
The other important reflection of sexism in language is in lexicon. The problem is caused by the use of 'male' features in a sex-neutral context. Moreover, another lexical fields that are taken into account as errors resulting in discrimination in language are marital status, asymmetries ( in other words, marked and unmarked forms), jobs and pejorative words about women.

Firstly, marital status always takes place in every language as an indication of sexism living in a culture. What we mean by marital status as a distinctive feature occurs when we talk about women. Until recently, there was no abbreviation for women that did not reflect their marital status, either Miss or Mrs was used for them that indicates whether they are married or single. Whereas, there is no indication of men's marital status on the title 'Mr.' . This indication of women's marital status is also seen in French as Mademoiselle and Madame; and in German as Fraulein and Frau. Yet, recently, as a solution the title 'Ms.', which has no reflection of a woman's situation, is proposed and in French and German, such terms as Mademoiselle-Madame and Fraulein-Frau have lost their popularity in use. This distinction can also be seen in ID cards in Turkiye, for example, when a woman divorces, her marital status is written as widow but this is not the same for men, since it is writen as single even if they divorce. This discrimination has a great value in many societies since their viewpoints shift towards women in accordance with their marital status. For example, in Turkiye, if you are a widow and live alone, you are to stand trial as a hussy woman. As it is seen clearly language itself may not be sexist, it is the societies who are labelling women as Miss or Mrs.

As for the asymmetries or marked and unmarked forms, English makes distinctions of a sex-based kind, for example, actor-actress, host-hostess, etc. What we understand from asymmetry is that among male/female pairs, most of the male terms are unmarked, whereas, female terms are formed by affixing a bound morpheme or by compounding. As an illustration;

Male	Female
Actor Host Author Count Heir Hero Poet Paul Hayri Patron Kral	Actress Hostess Autheress Countess Heiress Heroine Poetess Pauline Hayriye Patroniçe Kraliçe

Some of these forms have created quite different kinds of use and meaning. For example; even though a governer is the one who governs a state, a governess means who looks after children. In addition, a mistress is not a female master nor a majorette a female major, for instance, while Mary is called as Tom's mistress, Tom is not called as Mary's master. You can say Mary is Tom's widow; whereas, you can not say Tom is Mary's widower. Another interesting asymmetry that Fromkin and Rodman (1993) clarify occurs when a woman gets married. As all women in all cultures arrogate their husbands' names in marriage, they are called with their husbands' names. For example, a woman is called as Mrs. Jack Fromkin or Professor and Mrs. John Smith; whereas a man is not called as Mr. Vicki Fromkin or Mr. and Dr. Mary Jones. The other pairs that reflect differentiation are man-woman, gentleman-lady, bachelor-spinster and boy-girl. In the last case, Lakoff (1975) indicates that, in English, the word 'boy' is not used for a male after 18, whereas 'girl' is used for a female for a longer time. In Turkish, the use of the word 'boy' (oðlan) has the meaning of being homosexual (König, 1992:26). While we can talk about 'career woman' and 'housewife', we can not do about 'career man' and 'househusband', since it is again the society that does not let these words exist and decides that men have already had careers and it is the women's duty to work in houses.

The last and the most significant discrimination occurs when male features are used in a sex-neutral context. What we refer to male features is the use of the word "man" as a general term including both men and women like mankind or postman or manhole. Crystal (1987) gives a good example of "generic" -man;

People would bring their wives, mothers
and children.
Rise Up, O Men of God...
Man, being a mammal, breastfeeds his young.
Mind that child - he may be deaf !
Man overboard!

As it is seen the word "man" is used for both men and women in the lines "being a mammal, breastfeeds his young" .

An educational publishing house (Scott Foresman, 1972) makes a few suggestions for the substitutions of the sex-marked words such as;

Early man	Early humans
Man and His World Mailman The common men The motorist...he The farmer and his wife Mary Smith is a highly successful woman executive A fair sex The captain is John Smith His beautiful first officer is Joan Porter	World history Mail carriers Ordinary people The motorist...he or she A farm couple Mary Smith is a highly successful executive Woman The captain is John Smith and the first officer is Joan Porter.

(Wardhaugh, 1986:313)

In many cases, with the change of pronouns, the laws and regulations are rewritten by using the sex-neutral terms. This reform in language itself by eliminating sexist terms is just for a less biased language and constitutes only a small part of social and political reform for the equility of power and opportunities in the society.

MANNERS OF MALE AND FEMALE SPEECH
Just like the other concepts causing linguistic variation such as age, region or religion, gender has a considerable effect on linguistic variation. For two sexes get into interaction continuously, this intercourse strives to prevent the ascension of linguistic differences between men and women. In spite of this, there exist remarkable linguistic distinctions in the manner of male and female speech. These differences may be dependent upon the social factors, since men and women experience life differently and live life in different contexts. Thus, it becomes inevitable to face with distinctions. As an illustration of this bias few of words or phrases that men use and women understand but not use or vice-versa can be given. These differences can be categorized as gender preferential features of language and gender exclusive features of language.

Gender preferential features can be used by both sexes but are prefered by one of them. These features comprise; lexical varieties, the pitch of speech, the standard use of language and conversational features of male and female speech.

Whereas, gender exclusive features are used by only one gender, by either males or females. These features are not seen in all languages but in a few such as; Japanese, Koasati, Thai, Gros Ventre and Carib. 

Gender Preferential Differences
Gender preferential differences are met much more common in the languages of the world than gender exclusive differences. In this phenomenon men and women use distinctive lexical items, for example, women tend to recognize more precise terms for colors such as mauve, burgundy, ecru, crimson, herringbone, lavender, yet, men usually recognize more types of cars such as Cherokee, Mercedes, diesel. The pitch of speech, which clarifies that women's voices are higher than men's, is the other variable differentiation. Non-standard usage of language, including double negation and invariable don't, the distinct topics that sexes choose during an interaction such as relationships, sports, beauty, sex and so on and the behaviours of the sexes in an interaction form the core of gender preferential differences. These distinctions will be discussed in detail in the following sub-parts.

Lexical varieties
In the area of morphology and vocabulary, there are many studies focusing on English, for the lexical distinctions that men and women make in different contexts are very noticable. For example, while women possess a wide range of specific color names such as mauve, beige, aquamarine, magenta, rose, paisley, burgundy, chartreuse, and crimson, most men do not. In addition, women frequently use such words and phrases as fantastic, adorable, precious, exquisite, admiring, darling, divine, lovely, sweet, such fun, cute, thrilling, beautiful- as Maltz and Borker (1982) indicate that according to Goodwin (1980a), girls generally use the inclusive forms such as: 'let's' , 'we gonna' , 'we could' , and 'we gotta' in their activities. Whereas men possess a greater lexicon in the areas of male activities, for instance, mending cars or hunting, and male-dominated sports such as football, boxing and rally. 

Pitch
The other difference is found in the physiology of both sexes. That is the pitch of speech. The average pitch of women's speech (the degree of vocal fold vibration) is conventionally agreed that it is higher than the pitch of men. It is characteristically 100-400 vs. 80-200 cycles-per-second. It is, as believed, just because of the size of vocal tract which is shorter of women. Yet, according to the enquiry of Caroline Henton who is a phonetician, the differences occur not only because of physiology alone but also due to some social factors involved during the acquisition period or during puberty or just because of the beliefs about what women and men should sound when they talk.  

 

 Non-standard Usage
The third concept is non-standard usage of language. Firstly, to explain what we mean by non-standard and standard English would be useful for us to percieve this part. Standard English is the speech variety that stands in all English-speaking countries. Besides this single variety, there are, of course, other varieties which are called non-standard. Relying on many studies, women generally choose and use forms which are much closer to the standard ones more frequently than men, who belong to the same social status or age. Non-standard English is examined in two perspectives which are non-standard grammatical features and non-standard phonological features. 

 

Among non-standard grammatical features, the first 'oft-cited' (thr term of Southerland and Katamba, 1996) characteristic is double negation. For example, the first sentence illustrates a multiple negation;
a- I did not do nothing.
b- I did not do anything.
c- I did something. 

In the first sentence (a), since there are two negative elements they both terminate each other and its meaning becomes equal to the third sentence (c). Yet, when someone hears this sentence (a), inspite of being non-standard, she comprehends this sentence with the same meaning as the third one has.This non-standard usage is seen more frequently in men's speech than is in women's .According to the inquiry made in Detroit population, females in four classes show a great sensitivity to use prestige norms in their both actual speech and attitudes towards speech. Although both males females stand in the same social class, the percentage of the stigmatized forms that they use differentiate from each other.

The other non-standard feature occurs when the third person singular is used. The sentences a and b below illustrates this usage;
a- She know something.
b- My sister don'tknow you. 

Conversation
The last feature that men and women show distinctions is conversational styles. Gender patterns in conversational styles consist of turn-taking, topic selection and control, minimal responses / backchannel behavior / sympathy, interruption and overlapping speech, and the initiation and ending of conversation. These characteristics can be explained seperately as women's features and men's features.

 

Firstly, as one of women's features, a striking difference in male and female contributions to conversation is women's great tendency to ask questions. Fishman (1978) fortifies this view by saying " at times I felt that all women did was ask questions" (Maltz and Borker, 1982). Why women ask so many questions is to provide the conversation to continue, whereas men deem that they are very inquisitive and want to get more information about men. Not only for the flow of the interaction but also for encouraging others to speak, women mostly add tag questions to their sentences. With respect to Lakoff (1973), that is just because of women's being unsure about themselves and their opinions, thus, waiting for others' approval ( Wardhaugh, 1986). For the same reason, women use variable intonation patterns such as patterns associated with surprise and politeness- rising intonation pattern to answer a question rather than a falling intonation.

The second feature is the frequent use of minimal responses such as 'mm hmm', 'really?', 'is that so?'. To keep the conversation going, women show a great tendency to do conversational backchanneling or minimal responses the meanings of which are ' I'm listening to you, please continue' but for men ' I agree with you' or at least ' I follow your arguement so far.'. Therefore, women are listening more often than men are agreeing. The pronouns 'you' and 'we' are also seen frequently in women's speech to stress the existance of the other speakers.

As for the most striking difference, what comes to daylight is the choice of topics to be discussed in an interaction. When men talk to men, the topics focus on competition, sports, cars, aggression and entertainment, on the other hand, when women talk to women the topics are, in most case, family, home, feelings, relationships and so on. Whereas when they get together, men talk less about aggression and women talk less about home and family. According to the questionnaire about topics, which men and women talk about most often, the list of them and their percentage is defined like this;

	F	M
Money Work Sex Other Friends Relationships World Affairs Kids Sports Cars Entertainment Fashion Philosophy	4 12 11 9 37 3 12 1 0 7 1 4	5 15 18 6 13 8 2 11 3 13 5

 (www.whatwomenwantmovie.com/survey/)

In short, males and females differentiate in many ways in a conversation from the intonation they use to the topics they choose. Besides these gender preferential differences, there exist gender exclusive differences which will be examined in detail in the next part.

Gender Exclusive Differences
Gender exclusive differentiation means different speech varieties used by men and women in few societies. In these societies, a woman or a man may not be allowed to speak the variety of the other gender. In that sense, the varieties are refered to gender-exclusive. The languages such as Japanese, Koasati, Thai, Gros Ventre and Carib exhibit such different styles that the entire systems of grammatical categories may vary based on the sex of the speaker. Intonation, phonology, syntax, lexicon and the context of use may also be affected. The considerable example for the distinctive features in the languages of men and women is the language of the Dyribal people of North Queensland, Australia. Guwal is their normal, everyday language used by both sexes, yet, if the mother-in-law of a man is alive and the father-in-law of a woman is present, they use Dyalnuy, a mother-in-law variety. Both varieties have the same phonology and grammar, however, vocabulary is absolutely different (Wardhaugh, 1986:306).

Yet these differences do not result in two irrelevant, different languages but only the gender-marked features of one language. The subsequent sub-parts will discuss the languages, which show considerable different styles of men and women speech, such as Japanese, Koasati, Thai, Gros Ventre, Carib and English in which there is no dramatic differentiation but few dialect differentiations.

Japanese male-female speech
In Japanese, female is called as "joseigo" or "onnakotoba" which is used among the upper class women to emphasize their prestige in society. The use of female style which shows considerable distinctions from male style is in women's control, it is up to them to use either female speech or sex-neutral one, when they want to indicate their feminine side they prefer female style, otherwise they use sex-neutral one. The other feature is that the forms that both sexes use exhibit crucial differences which are seen in the use of formal and honorific varieties of speech (Crystal, 1987:27).

Crystal also gives some markers of Japanese female style :

· Use of atashi ('l'), instead of watakushi.
· Sentence particle wa used at the end of sentence with rising intonation, instead of with falling intonation.
· Interjections of surprise, such as ara, mâ, uwâ.
· Less frequent use of such interjections as â or é.
· Use of sentence particle yo following a noun, instead of da (male) or desu yo (sex-neutral).
· Use of no ('matter') at the end of statements, instead of n da (male) or n desu (sex-neutral), e.g. Dekinai no ('It [a matter of being] impossible) vs. Dekinai n da.
· Use of polite forms of nouns, such as osakana (fish) for sakana (sex-neutral).
· More frequent use of particle ne ('right?', 'okay') at the end of sentences.
· Less frequent use of the assertive particles ze and zo at the end of statements. 

Fromkin and Rodman (1993) states that, in Japanese, the styles of two sexes are so different that they train 'seeing eye' guide dogs in English, since these dogs can not know the sex of the owner and it is much easier for a blind to use English than to use the wrong language style. This great distinctions can be seen in both grammatical and lexical morphology. An illustration at lexical level;

Women's Form Onaka Taberu Watashi Boku, Okasan Oishii Ohiya

Men's Form Hara Kuu are Ohukuro Umai Mizu

Meaning Stomach Eat I Mother Delicious Water

(Trask, 1995:84 and Southerland and Katamba, 1996:551)

In addition to lexical morphology, differences at grammatical level are shown below (Hudson, 2000:466).

W: Atashi onata go suki yo.
M: Boku kimi ga suki da yo.
'I love/like you.'

W: Chotto kite.
M: Chotto koi.
'Come here for a minute' 

Koasati, Thai, Gros Ventre and Carib
An apparent example of the distinctions of male and female speech in vocabulary is an Amerindian language spoken in southwestern Lousiana, Koasati. The word forms used by men and women differentiate according to a set of rules. When it is illustrated by this information :

Women's Form	Men's Form	Meaning
Lakawwis. Lakáwt? Lakáw Lakáwwilit . Lakawwitak Mól . í:p Tacilw Molhíl Tacwán Iskó Ká	Lakawwil Lakáwt? Lakáws Lakáwwilits Lakawwitaks Móls í:ps Tacilws Molhíls Tacilwás iskó Kás	I'm lifting it You're lifting it. He's lifting it. I lift it Let me lift it. He's peeling it He's eating it. You're singing. We're peeling it. Don't sing! He drank. He's saying.

(Akmajian, et. al, 1984 :327 ; Crystal, 1987 :27 ; Southerland and Katamba,1997:550)

The difference occurs with the existance of a final /s/ at the end of the words used by men. But the rule is not so simple as this, since in some occasions the forms of men and women are identical. For example, if the word ends in a vowel or in the affricate /ts/, the forms are identical. Therefore, the word 'isko' (he drank) is used by both men and women. Yet, in some cases, when the word ends in a nasal vowel or in consonants, the form of men substitutes /s/.

English
To identify and classify the distinctions seen in male and female speech in English is more difficult since there are no accurate classes that are allowed to be used by only one sex such as grammatical forms, phonological varieties and lexical items as in Japanese or Koasati. Yet, there are few frequent differences. For example, the words, phrases and intensifiers that women use mostly are super, lovely, great beautiful, adorable, darling, Goodness me, Oh dear, so and such.

The strategies and the topics chosen by sexes are the other elements resulting in differences. Women are more likely to ask questions, make more conversational backchanneling, use the pronouns 'you' and 'we' more frequently, have a range of intonation patterns and lean to talk about home, family and relationships. Whereas, men tend to interrupt, dispute and ignore what is said, be dominant in an interaction, add new topics in the conversation and mostly talk about sports, cars and girls.

In general, differences in both sexes' speech in the world languages are found in most cases at lexical or phonological level rather than at grammatical level with strict constructions. The latter part will investigate the factors that result in these distinctions in language.

EXPLANATIONS OF THE EXISTANCE OF THE VARIOUS MODES OF MALE-FEMALE SPEECH
There are various attempts having been made to explain why these differences, discussed in the previous parts, occur. Most of the explanations focus on social power, psychological and cultural differences.

The first notion that explains why women are more likely to use prestigious forms is the power differentials. According to Trudgill (1972-95) women are more aware of the status, in Eckert's words more 'status-bound' , than men,since, women have nothing to do other than using language much closer to the standard to be able to gain status. Whereas, men define their status in society with the help of their occupation, wealth and power. What bestow power and control to men and drive them away from women, as Fishman (1978) stressed, are the norms which define favourable manner for men and women. The awareness of powerlessness in society makes women use such a powerful, effective, formal and prestigious language for not only satisfying themselves but also enhancing their social position (Eckert, 1997:214-17; Maltz and Borker, 1982:198-99 and Poole, 1999:113). Briefly, if society let women improve their status and feel their power and did not react so harshly against women about their behaviours, women would not feel themselves oblidged to utilize such a language use.

Reference

Akmajian, A., Demers, R. A., and Harnish, R. M. 1984. Linguistics : An introduction to language and communication (second edition). Massachusetts : The MIT Press.

Cyrstal, D. 1987. The Cambridge encyclopedia of language. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Eckert, P. 1997. The whole women : Sex and gender differences in variation. In N. Coupland, and A. Jawoski (Eds.), Sociolinguistics a reader (212 - 220). New York : Martin's Press.

Fromkin, V., and Rodman, R. 1993. An introduction to language (fifth edition). Fort Worth : Harcourt Brace Collage Publishers.

Hudson, G. 2000. Essential introductory linguistics. Oxford : Basil Blackwell Publishers.

König, G. Ç. 1992. Dil ve cins : Kadin ve erkeklerin dil kullanimi. In Dilbilim araþtirmalari (25 - 35).

Maltz, D. N., and Borker, R. A. 1982. A cultural approach to male - female miscommunication. In J.J. Gumperz (Ed.), Language and social identity (196 - 206). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Meyers, N. (producer and director). 2000. What women want [movie]. Hollywood, Paramount Pictures.

Onaran, O., Büker, S., and Bir, A. A. 1998. Eskisehir'de erkek rol ve tutumlarina iliþkin alan araþtirmasi (no.26). Eskiþehir : Anadolu Üniversitesi Iletiþim Bilimleri Fakültesi Yayinlari.

Poole, S. C. 1999. An introduction to linguistics. New York : Martin's Press.

Radford, A., Atkinson, M., Britain, D., Clashen, H., and Spencer, A. 1999. Linguistics, an introduction. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Southerland, R. H., and Katamba, F. 1996. Language in social contexts : Language and gender. In W. O'Grady, M. Dobrovolsky, and F. Katamba (Eds.), Comtemporary linguistics an introduction (third edition) (549 - 554). London : Longman.

Trask, R. L. 1995. Language : The basics. London : Longman. Wardhaugh, R. 1986. An introduction to sociolinguistics. Oxford : Basil Blackwell Publishers.

Wolfram, W., and Fasold, R. W. 1974. The study of social dialects in American English. London : Prentice - Hall.

www.whatwomenwantmovie.com/survey/