Summaries: "Introduction to Sociolinguistics" by Janet Holmes. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Gender and Age

This chapter discusses how women and men speech differs, as each of them use different linguistic forms.

The concept of “gender” allows for focusing on describing masculine and feminine speech behavior.

If we look at speech differences in relation to Gender in non-western speech communities like:

1-   Japan:  we will realize that the linguistic forms used by men are longer. The forms used by women usually have the prefix (o-) to show politeness or formality. In traditional Japanese, the men use different word forms (vocabulary) than women. In modern Japanese, the forms which were used by men are regarded as words to be used by anyone in casual contexts, while the forms which were used by women are used in public contexts.

2-   Montana: if men and women do not use the right linguistic forms they would be regarded as bisexuals.

3-   India: in Bengali, the women use an initial (l) while men use initial (n) in some words.  

Gender-Exclusive vs. Gender – Preferential speech features

Gender differences are also one of the aspects that reflect social class and power. It also reflects the social role. How:

Gender – exclusive linguistic forms used only by women, and others used only by men reflect gender – exclusive social roles.  This is because in such communities the responsibilities of men and women differ. For example, in Bengali, a wife (who is subordinate to her husband) will not call him by his real name, but would instead use any other word to refer to him. This is because the roles of each of them are different. The man is more superior.

However, in western communities where the roles of men and women overlap, the linguistic forms overlap too. Therefore we have gender – preferential linguistic forms. In communities like Sydney, Montreal or any English speaking city, the linguistic forms are gender-preferential. For example, in English-speaking cities women use more (–ing) and few (–in) in words like swimming, unlike men who use (-in) more than (-ing). In Montreal French, women tend to keep the pronunciation of (l) while men tend to delete it. In Sydney, men and women sometimes pronounce (th) at the beginning of the word like as (f), but men use it more than women.

How does gender reflect social class, or how does Gender interact with social class?

There are general patterns that can be identified:

1-   The speech of women and men wither in the highest social group or the lowest social group resembles each other.

2-    Across all social groups women generally use standard forms, while men use more vernacular like multiple negation constructions, or any other vernacular forms that are not prestigious. This pattern has been found in all western speech communities, and was described by Peter Trudgill. This pattern was first found in a study of American children in semi-rural New England Village thirty years ago where boys used more (-in) than girls who sued more (-ing). Later in Boston and Detroit, boys used more vernacular forms like (tol) instead of (told), and (las) rather than (last).

There are four explanations for why women speak differently:     

1-   Social status explanation: women are more status conscious than men, and they know that speech signals social status and background. Therefore, they use more standard forms to signal high social status, and some of the women lack the social prestige so they use these forms to acquire it. There is a suggestion that says women who are not in paid employment use more standard forms to acquire high social status. However, an American study proved the opposite. the study proved that women who are in paid employment are using more standard forms because they engage more with people, while the women who stayed in home used more vernacular because they did not interact with people. Therefore, the explanation of social status is not sufficient to explain why women use more standard forms than men.

2-   Women’s role as guardians of society’s values: society expects better behavior from women more than men. They are expected to be modeling correct behavior in society. Boys’ mistakes are tolerated but the girls are blamed for their mistakes. Again, this explanation is not sufficient, because it is not true in all social groups. Women in casual and personal situations do not use formal or standard forms.  For example, a mother speaking to her daughter will not use standard forms in such relaxed situations.

3-   Women’s status as a subordinate group: women as a subordinate group must speak carefully and politely. However this explanation is not sufficient because you can express yourself politely while using vernacular Liverpool and one can also be very insulting while using RP. So there is no relation between being politer with the use of standard forms. Amore sophisticated version of this suggestion is that women use high standard forms for face-protection. This suggestion is also insufficient because it is more sensible if we say that women use high standard forms according to the addressee. They are sensitive to the person whom they are addressing.    

4-   Speech express masculinity: men prefer vernacular forms because they carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness, which may explain why women tend to use more standard forms. This suggestion can be supported by evidence: Norwich men, while speaking, displayed more vernacular forms while women did not. Men regarded vernacular forms positively and value them highly. These forms have “covert prestige”, which is opposite to “overt prestige” of the standard forms.  Standard forms tend to be associated with femininity and female values. However, we find a problem in this explanation as women also use more vernacular forms in relaxed and informal situations.

Other explanations

o   Women categorization: in research, linguists classify or categorize women according to their husbands’ social class. In such cases, sometimes a woman is better educated than her husband, and then she speaks differently, using more standard forms than he does. Because of this miscategorization we relies the differences in their speech as the man uses more vernacular than the woman.

o   Interviewer and context influences: people tend to accommodate to the speech of the interviewer who is usually from the middle class. Because women are more cooperative conversationalists than men, they tend to use more standard forms to establish “speech accommodation”. On the other hand, working class men tend to be less responsive, and they even use more vernacular forms just to distinguish themselves from, and to react against the interviewer who belongs to the middle class. As for the context, women use more vernacular forms while talking to a friend rather than a stranger. This is due to the relationship between the people concerned in the interview. For example, in one of the earliest social dialect surveys, men and women where interviewed by male interviewers. They were asked questions to elicit casual style which have more vernacular forms. The women were asked about childhood games while the men were asked about fights and issues related to women. In that case, the interview context was different for men and women. As for men, they used more vernacular, but women did not. They regarded the interview as a conversation with a stranger.

o   The gender of the speaker itself may override other social factors: in some communities, being a man or a woman influences speech and is the reason for speech variation between men and women. For example, Glottalization, which is a feature of Tyneside vernacular, is described as a male norm rather than a working –class norm. This means that it is not necessary that a man who uses glottalization in his speech to belong to the working class. Glottalization involves cutting off air at the vocal cords while producing the sounds /p/, /t/ or /k/. In reading, the speech of adolescent boys and girls in an adventure playground was recorded. Each gender used its own grammatical patterns. Males used multiple negations and forms like (ain’t), while females used less of these forms. In this case, gender is the explanatory factor for different speech patterns  

o   However, there are exceptions to this pattern :

Ø Women from the lower class in Norwich use as many vernacular forms as men do, and there are other communities where women use even more vernacular forms than men like Brazlandia.

Ø Vernacular forms may express non urban and conservative values, if the standard form is the urban norm.

Ø Vernacular forms may reflect anti-establishment attitudes if the standard form is the middle-class adult norm. (See chapter 8 for details over this issue).

Age – Graded features of speech:

There are speech features that vary over age:

1-   Pitch: male voices generally sound lower in pitch than women’s. However, there are physical, social and cultural factors that contribute to the pitch change.  On the physical level, boys’ vocal cords grow faster than girls. As for the social and cultural factors, it is more masculine to speak with a lower-pitched voice. That is why young boys develop this masculine feature as well as other sociolinguistic male features like the use of more vernaculars. Also, men used to have dominance and influence in society until very recently. That is why a female politician uses a low-pitched voice. It can be explained as she to gain the society’s acceptance as the audience got used to the domination of men over society.

2-     Vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar: there are patterns or forms that are appropriate for a particular age group and can not be use by other age groups. Teenagers will use certain forms but will stop using them as they grow and have children, and make friends with families with children. For instance, swearing words used by teenagers will be changed over time.  Slang is another area of vocabulary that reflects a person’s age. It is very associated with young people, and signals the membership to the Young group.   

Age and social dialect data:   

Figure 7.3 explains the relationship between age and the use of vernacular forms. We realize that:

1-   They are high in childhood and adolescent.

2-   They decrease as people approach middle age and abide with social norms.

3-   They increase again in old age as society pressure reduces.

4-   The date reflects that the child acquires stylistic ranges beside the vernacular forms. As he/she grows up, he/she acquires more vocabulary and can be able to control grammatical constructions. He/she then will tend to use more standard forms than vernacular forms.

5-   The use of prestige forms reaches its top between the age of 30-55, as people try to abide with society norms.

6-   A similar situation to this linguistic prestige form is bilingualism in bilingual or multilingual communities. For example in Canada, the children grow monolingual in French. When they grow and become young people the bilingualism reaches its peak between 30 and 55 years of age, and they effectively use English and French. When they become old and retire they revert to French monolingualism again.

GLOSSARY:

Gender – exclusive forms: كلمات خاصة بكل جنس لا يمكن أن يستخدمها الجنس الآخر

Gender – preferential forms: كلمات يفضلها جنس عن آخر

Overlap: يتداخل ويشترك مع شيء آخر في نفس الصفة

Semi-rural شبه رعوي (غير متمدن)

Status conscious يعير اهتمام للحالة الاجتماعية

Sophisticated معقد

Face protection مصطلح لغوي يعني الحفاظ على احترام وقيمة الشخصية

Machismo الرجولية

Glottalizationالوقف المزماري (وقف مفاجئ للهواء مما ينتج عنه نطق الأحرف الساكنة كالهمزة

Male-norm قاعدة تختص بالرجال دون النساء