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Gender and language relationship
Gender and language relationship
Gender and language relationship
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The aim of this assignment is to evaluate and discuss the different techniques and approaches that are applied to both male and female speech. It will do this by critically analysing studies conducted by different linguists and theorists into language and gender issues.
There have always appeared to be differences in the way that men and women speak. The research into language and gender considers how language impacts upon how society informs and interprets gender. ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ describe sex differentiations whereas ‘Feminine’ and ‘Masculine’ can be attached to either of those differentiations to describe gender. (Mellor, 2010) It can be argued that when a male is speaking to another male it is very dissimilar to the way they would address a female. This could also be said for the way females interact with other females and then with someone from the opposite sex. The linguist Otto Jespersen, in 1922 published Language: It’s Nature, Development and Origin and suggested that ‘there is danger of language becoming vague and insipid if we are to content ourselves with women’s expressions.’ (Class notes, 2013) This quote, in today’s society would be seen as sexist and a way in which to belittle women. It implies that female speech isn’t as varied and that it isn’t as valued as male speech. In Jespersen’s work, male language is viewed as normative and the language of others, for example women, is seen as deficient. Jespersen privileges men’s use of vocabulary as having more vigour and vividness. He poses that a male’s use of sentence structure is complex while a female’s use of language is joined together on a string of ‘ands’ and similar words. (Mellor, 2010) A weakness of Jespersen’s work is that he uses quotations from literat...
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... with males will boast about their skills and social status, when it comes to the depth of conversations and what men and women talk about, findings have been very different
Works Cited
Class notes. (2013) City of Wolverhampton College. Wolverhampton.
Holmes, J (2008). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 3rd ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
Kunsmann, P. (1998). Gender, Status and Power in Discourse Behavior of Men and Women. Available: [Online] http://www.linguistik-online.de/1_00/KUNSMANN.HTM. Last accessed 24 November 2013.
Lakoff, R (2004). Language and Woman's Place. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Mellor, B. (2010). Deficit, Dominance, Difference and Discursive: the changing approaches to language and gender. Available: [Online] http://atp.uclan.ac.uk/buddypress/diffusion/?p=736. Last accessed 23 November 2013.
“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” as the famous saying of John Gray goes. It is believed men and women are nothing alike in almost every aspect. In Deborah Tannen’s essay “Gender in the classroom: Teacher’s Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently” she focused on how men and women differ when it comes to communicating, with emphasis on how it effects to how men and women behave in the classroom.
Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my topic is going to cover language analysis of the text and who women reading and writing differs according to the discourse analysis within linguistic, psychology, case studies audiences and surveys. The book would be helpful, particularly the last three essays that discusses gender, public speaking, the question of politeness and impoliteness in public speaking. Mills’ analysis is not complete without including the idea of global notions of both women and men, to see whether women and men write and read in the same way globally. Therefore, an update would enrich the book’s discussion section. Although, Mills addresses the class and race theme in language and public speaking, I will only look into the role of language that plays a part in doing or reducing gender in literary, non-literary texts and in conversation.
Women get typecasted based on varied issues, which causes many to think why females are the only ones being addressed. One stereotype that challenged assumptions of many is the stereotype of how much men and women like to speak (“Stereotypes Against Women”). A great number of people think women are more excessively communicative than men. The stereotype is so pervasive that it is said men supposedly speak about 7,000 words per day while women speak about 45,000 words per day (“Stereotypes Against Women”). Although this is just an estimate of how much speaking is done by both the genders, this wasn’t even near as to what the actual result was when microphones were put on them to record how much they communicate throughout the day. “The stereotype was proven inaccurate as both men and women speak about 17,000 words per day” (“Stereotypes Against Women”). It’s not offensive to think women are talkative, but what gives it that impression is the way people compare men and
Nilsen began this study of the dictionary not with the intention of prescribing language change but simply to see what the language would reveal about sexism to her. Sexism is not something that existing independently in American English or in the particular dictionary that she happened to read. Rather it exists in people's minds.
Deborah Tannen’s essay, “There Is No Unmarked Woman”, explores the idea of “marked” and “unmarked” words, styles, titles, and how females have no ability to choose an unmarked position in life. She posits that “The unmarked forms of most English words also convey ‘male’” (88). Tannen is incorrect in her premises because females are able to choose unmarked hair and clothing styles, men are marked just as often as women, and many unmarked forms of words no longer convey “male.”
(week 4 reading 1). "Difference" is a non-violent approach that indicates that develops the notion that men and women communicate from and in different cultural worlds (reference ppp). Deborah Tannen is a major advocate of this position with her book You Just Don't Understand (1990). (reference week4 reading 1). Comparing conversational goals, Tannen argues that men aim to communicate factual information, whereas women are more concerned with building and maintaining cooperative, caring, emotional relationships. In addition, Cameron (kai imerominia einai to week 4 reading 1) again provides a very good example of ‘difference approach’ helping us to understand the way it entered the public view of language and gender. The example used is the book of a mass-writer, John Gray, who wrote a fictional tale about how the two sexes migrated to planet earth from the different planets of Mars and Venus and that each sex is acclimated to its own planet's society and customs, but not to those of the
The construction of gender is based on the division of humanity to man and woman. This is impossible ontologically speaking; because the humans are not divided, thus gender is merely an imaginary realm. It only exist in the language exercises, and the way that cultural products are conceived in them. This essay is a preliminary attempt to offer an analysis of ‘One Is Not Born a Woman’ by Wittig and ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone De Beauvoir holds on the language usage contribution to the creation of genders and the imagined femininity.
Communication between males and females has always been somewhat complicated. Because we are arguing that males and females have different cultures we wanted to take a look at what some of these differences might be. According to our research the inherent differences between male and female culture are the different roles that society holds for them and the ways these roles lead to different communication styles. The stereotypes that men and women grow up with affect the types of ways in which they communicate. We first wanted to take a look at how they specifically differ while men and women are arguing or having normal conversations. We also looked at the different types of networks that men and women share. These networks also differ and as do the reasonings for their formation. Although we do not think that men and women need to change their cultures to effectively communicate, we do think that better communication is possible. One of the researchers we took a look at was Deborah Tannen. According to Tannen the reason that men and women do not communicate well is that men and women use language differently. Women take the attitude that conversation is to explore solutions to common problems while men concern themselves more with getting information and hard data from conversation. Tannen states that what women look for in communication is human connection, while men consider status to be most important. They are looking for independence and are constantly looking for higher accomplishments. Intimacy threatens this independence, so men have a tendency to avoid it. One of the old sayings about women is that they talk more than men. It turns out that it is not necessarily true. Women seem to talk more in private conversations than do men. Women do not generally have a fear of intimacy and therefore are much more open with one another during private conversations. It is more difficult for women to use this type of communication style in the public arena. In that case it is men that do most of the talking. Tannen ultimately argues that men use communication as a weapon. They use long explanations to command attention from who it is they are speaking to. They use it to convey information and to ultimately gain agreement. Tannen suggests that through even simple conversation men are continually protecting their status. She sugg...
Something that has made an acceleration to several arguments is gender communication (Oluwagbemi-Jacob 225). The gender
In the introduction of Deborah Tannen’s “Conversation Style: Talking on the Job”, she compares and contrasts the ways men and women communicate. This reminds me of what I tell people that are struggling in their relationships. Women and men express themselves differently. Women think, but men act. If you can’t wrap your head around this, being in a relationship with anyone is going to be hard. Yet, this is such a basic way of looking at this issue. Not only are the genders vastly different, but each person relates to the world around them in a certain way. He or she also needs to be related to in a specific way. Looking at personalities and personal histories can give a better look at the way we communicate with each other. Tannen examines
In her essay titled “It Begins at the Beginning”, professor of linguistics Deborah Tannen describes how girls’ and boys’ communication and language patterns differ from an early age. Tannen’s essay, which is adapted from her book titled You Just Don’t Understand, she states that in the world of communication boys and girls have vast differences, which makes itself apparent in the way that they play. The author backs this up with two explanations. First, is that people not only talk to boys and girls differently, but also accept different ways of talking from them. Second, children learn communication not only from their parents but also from their peers, and there are major differences in the way boys and girls play together and speak to each other.
Further evidence of communicative differences exist between men and women in various other social settings as well. Consider, for example, those individuals employed in customer service-related Jobs. While in JC Penny, I noticed that female customer service representatives were more apt to offer immediate friendly assistance than the male reps. Men are not as cocky nor as confident in this sort of situation; their eyes tend to dart around the area of the store while the eyes of a women remain focused upon the eyes of the customer. The men seem to communicate with a lot less smiles. Apparently they have to get past a certain “ice-breaking'; point before they will feel comfortable with a genuine look of happiness.
...or a relationship”. In genderlects, there is no superior or inferior method of communication, but rather, men and women just communicate differently. By understanding these differences, one can reduce the amount of misunderstandings in future conversations.
The book An Intorduction of Sociolinguistics is an outstanding introductary book in the field of sociolinguistics. It encompasses a wide range of language issues. In chapter 13, Wardhaugh provides a good insight to the relationship between language and gender. He explains gender differences of language-in-use with concise examples. Wardhaugh riases questions about sexist language and guides readers to look closer at how people use language differently because of their own gender in daily life. According to the Whorfian hypothesis, which indicates that the way people use language reflects their thoughts, different genders adapt different communication strategies.
How does language affect our interaction with other genders? Language is the basis of all interaction. The language we use is essential to other’s perceptions of us. We instinctively know this, so we cater our language to suit how we want to be perceived by others. Language is not the only factor in perception though. Other’s interpretation of our language is as important an ingredient in their perception of us as the language we use is. Our perceptions of each other, more than anything else dictate our interactions with each other. The essential question is does interpretation of language vary between genders?