Language and Gender

Language and Gender:

Gender and Language Use

Traditional gender roles embody the male role as agentive, where action, self-expansion, and individuality are the rule. By contrast, traditional gender roles define the female role as communal, embodying emotional expressiveness and a focus on the needs of others (Bakan, 1966). The work of Deborah Tannen suggests that the communication patterns of males and females often differ, with males using a direct and forceful style while females use a more indirect and intimate style of interaction (Tannen, 1995). Such linguistic styles parallel the masculine principle of agency and the feminine principle of communion. 

Gendered language use in CMC contexts is not very different from that in face-to-face interactions and includes similar features of "verbosity, assertiveness, use of profanity, politeness (and rudeness), typed representations of smiling and laughter, and degree of interactive engagement" (Herring, 2000). There are, however, differences in the modes of CMC, which may have consequences for language use or social interactions. For instance, online chatting differs from the turn-taking patterns of face-to-face or telephone conversation because online posts appear out of sequence, thereby impacting language coherence (Herring, 1999; Greenfield & Subrahmanyam, 2003). Instant Messaging (IM) may foster intimacy among users, including self-disclosure and sentimental feelings, because it cultivates social connectedness (Hu, Smith, Westbrook, & Wood, 2003). 

Robin Lakoff's (1975) theories on women's language suggest that females use a language style that reflects diffidence, shyness, and lower self-confidence, indicating a lack of commitment or strong opinion (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003). One device is euphemism, where a person uses words such as "fudge" or "heck" instead of profanity. Another device is the use of tag questions and hedges, such as "This weather is terrible, isn't it?" or "I kinda got angry." Another device is indirection when there is a reluctance to commit to something, for instance, "Oh sorry, I've got a doctor's appointment around that time." For Lakoff, women's language represents an overall conventional politeness (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003). 

How do Lakoff's theories relate to gender within a CMC context? A study of 2,692 messages of Internet discussion groups finds that groups dominated by females tend to 'self-disclose' and avoid or attempt to reduce tension (Savicki, 1996). Similarly, Herring (2000) finds that women are "more likely to thank, appreciate and apologize, and to be upset by violations of politeness" (Herring, 2000). 

In contrast, discussion groups dominated by males tend to use impersonal, fact-oriented language (Savicki, 1996), and males seem less concerned with politeness and sometimes violate expected online conduct (Herring, 2000). In an analysis of personal web pages, females are found to be "friendly" and "smiling", while males present themselves as "confident” . 

Michelle Rodino (1997) disagrees with conceptualizing male and female language use in terms of a binary opposition. In her study of Internet-Relay Chat (IRC), she finds that IRC participants construct and express gender in a variety of ways, and language use is flexible and dynamic (Rodino, 1997). Therefore, traditional gender and language research may oversimplify online language patterns because being "virtual" allows more freedom and             flexibility

In either case, studying CMC can provide a variety of insights into the ways males and females present themselves and interact with others in online settings. For this study, gender similarities and differences in language use represent an important means by which adolescents form an online identity.

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as classes of nouns which trigger specific types of behavior in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others.

Genders are types of noun classes in which the gender is referenced by the structure of the word. Every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few that belong to several classes at once.

If a language distinguishes between genders, each noun in that language will belong to one of those genders: in order to correctlydecline any noun and any modifier or other type of word affecting that noun, one must identify the gender of the subject.

While Old English (Anglo-Saxon) had grammatical gender, Modern English is normally described as lacking grammatical gender.

The linguistic notion of grammatical gender is distinguished from the biological and social notion of natural gender, although they interact closely in many languages. Both grammatical and natural gender can have linguistic effects in a given language.

Although some authors use the term "noun class" as a synonym or an extension of "grammatical gender", for others they are separate concepts. One can in fact say that grammatical gender is a type of noun class, as well as a grammatical category.

Many languages place each noun into two or three gender classes commonly called masculine, feminine and neuter gender. It is important to note that the terms are used purely for linguistic classification and have no real-world implications. It is possible for words pertaining to the sexes (male and female) to be inconsistent with their respective gender designation in any specific language.

 

English

Other languages still, like English, are rarely regarded as having grammatical gender, since they do not make gender distinctions through inflection, and do not generally require gender agreement between related words. Although gender marking is not significant in modern English, some distinctions in personal pronouns have been inherited from Old English, in which nouns had grammatical gender, giving speakers of Modern English a notion of how grammatical gender works, although these gendered pronouns are now ordinarily selected based on the physical sex (or lack thereof) of the items to which they refer rather than any strictly linguistic classification:

John insisted that he would pay for his own dinner.

Jane insisted that she would pay for her own dinner.

Here, the gender of the subject is marked both on the personal pronouns (he/she) and on the possessive adjectives (his/her). Marking of gender on the possessive form can be considered redundant in these examples, since his own and her own must refer to their respective antecedents, he and she, which are already unambiguously marked for gender.

Male Representation:

Our understanding of gender is influenced by the gender representations we encounter through mass media, as well as, environmental factors, such as childhood and family culture.

As soon as you are born, you are influenced by gender messages. Your care-givers' ideas about gender were, no doubt, passed on to you. In time, some of these ideas you may have accepted, and others, rejected. However, your childhood experiences had a great influence in defining your concept of gender. The culture into which you were born furthered defined your gender views. At some point in your life, you experienced a gender moment, a moment when you were aware that you were being shaped by the notions of gender present in your childhood, your culture, your society.

2. Gender Representations through the Life Cycle

Examining the life cycle exposes the dynamic nature of gender. Gender is neither fixed nor static—as with the unfolding of an individual's life cycle, the development of a household through the years and the process of maturation through learning. Rather, it is constantly reshaped by social environment, cultural changes, individual decisions, and a host of other factors.  

This unit brings together the bits and pieces of idealized life stories of men and women as they are represented in the world of advertisements. Seldom do ads depict more than one or two snapshot views of life (as in print ads) or vignettes of particular moments or "slices of life" (as in TV commercials). Here those various images and narratives are collected and assembled according to phases of the life cycle—from infancy through old age. What emerges from this exercise is an understanding of how gender is represented through advertisements.  

Included here are eighty-seven ads collected in various magazines available on newsstands in the months of May and June 2006.¹ The total number of advertisements featuring images of people in these magazines exceeded 1000, including duplications across magazines. The ads in this chapter were selected in such a way as to represent the broadest set of issues about gender. As such, these particular ads are intended to draw attention to the range of ideas in contemporary advertising. They should be used cautiously to draw conclusions about frequency or typicality of particular representation.