SOCIOLINGUISTICS
UNIT 11
TRƯƠNG VĂN ÁNH
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN
UNIT 11: LANGUAGE AND GENDER
I. INTRODUCTION
In this unit, we will be studying the sociological perception of language use as categorised by sex. In many cultures of the world, the language both males and females use has often been categorised. Certain things when spoken by women are regarded as outrageous and unacceptable by the society. Even in the classification of taboos, language use is termed abusive if used by any of the sexes. We will look at language and gender and compare the





language use by both male and female in order to understand the sociological import of this study.





II. GENERAL OVERVIEW
In Vietnamese male is often used before female. For example, “Thưa quý ông quý bà”, “Thầy cô”, “Chú thiếm”, “Ba má”, Cha mẹ”, etc. In English, the same thing takes place: male/female; husband/wife; brother/sister; son/daughter. In general, this was both more “natural”, and more “proper” as men were the “worthier” sex. In the nineteenth century, to avoid the male superiority grammarians used the neutral pronoun they and their in such statements as, Anybody can take a sugar cane if they want. The grammarians also use the







male or plural form for an indefinite pronoun: Where sex is unknown, he or they may be used to replace a mature person, he or it to stand for an immature child.
Otto Jespersen wrote a chapter in a book on “women`s language”. According to him the female vocabulary is less extensive than the male one, and men`s speech and voice pitch are stronger than women’s. He explains these differences due to hard and heavy labour of men. To conclude, he states that the social activities affect the linguistic matters of the two sexes.




The strong and powerful things may be replaced by pronoun he, while the beautiful and mild things may be replaced by pronoun she.
Ex: The sun, the thunder > he
The moon, the country > she
In his article “Men’s and Women`s Language” in The Catholic Sociological Review, P. H. Furfey suggested the following dichotomy:
A: Women – the beauty, talk more than men, talk more than do, are more polite, are indecisive/hesitant, are more flexible, are more careful, complain and nag, ask more questions, support each other, are more co-operative,


B: Men – the strong, swear more, rarely express emotions, talk about sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, are ruder, insult each other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more, are less patient.
It is noted that some of the above features are clearly true, while others may not be scientific and may be controversial.



III. LANGUAGE AND GENDER
Studying language and gender, linguists discover that people of two sexes speak and write languages in different ways. The study of language and gender is indispensable and should be developed in order to understand the objectives more elaborate. This study is composed of two quite different things: (1) how language shows, contains and keeps attitudes to gender; (2) how people speak or write languages in (different and distinctive) ways which denote the gender.




These studies help linguists understand how language is used to control, dominate or patronize and recognize the relative influence of nature and nurture, or of heredity and environment. As the result of these studies we comprehend that education or social conditioning can affect gender attitudes using languages (for example, to make speech more or less politically correct). Gender creates objective differences between the language of men and that of women in general, and no education or social conditioning can completely level these differences.





No power can erase the differences. The only thing that we can do is to tackle language and gender sensibly and wisely to make some contribution to making the world more cooperative and friendly. John Gray`s book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus clearly explains these differences even though men and women do not really come from different planets. It is the main point that we should know how to face these differences in the best way.





It is interesting that more women do their research on language and gender than men. However, this does not lower the value of their work. It causes us to wonder why women want to study language and gender, or why men pay less attention to this area of sociolinguistic theory? Professor David Crystal writes two pages to explain this in his Encyclopaedia of the English Language.



IV. GENDER, LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY
There have been marked indices of gender language in every society. There have also been identical markers of gender in all educated societies, educated in the sense of formal education. Some of the identifiable markers of gender in a typical enlightened society include:
A: Names and Titles
In the western countries children are named after their father’s family name. When a woman gets married, her maiden name should follow her husband’s family name. In Vietnam children are also named after their father’s family name.
However, a woman gets married, she still keeps her maiden name. Nowadays a child usually has a compound family name, for example, Trương Trần Lan Hương, Võ Ngô Hùng Anh, etc. Formerly it is easy for us to recognize the gender via name, for example, Văn for the male and Thị for the female.
B: Occupational Lexis
The occupational names are often neutral. Seeing an occupational name, we cannot realize the gender, for example, teacher, social-worker, doctor, lawyer, nurse. Sometimes speakers will show the gender in forms such as “woman

lawyer” or “male tailor”. Sometimes the attribute may clearly indicate the gender. For example, “They met a doctor with her husband in the hospital.
C: Semantic non-equivalences
In English there are words or expressions clearly indicating the gender. They are: Mrs, Ms/Mr; Miss/Master, Mr; Mistress/master; governess/governor; spinster/bachelor; tomboy/sissy; Lady/Lord; Lady/gentleman; Dame/knight; Bride/(bride)groom; Madam/sir; queen/king; emperor/emperess; matron/patron; husband/wife; aunt/uncle; author/authoress;

dog/bitch; cow/bull; hen/cock; etc.
D: Patronizing, controlling and insulting
In social contacts people often patronize, control or insult other people. In these situations they use particular terms such as dear, love, pet or addressing a group of adult women as girls, men as boys or lads without any demeaning. In Vietnamese, we often use terms such as ả, ẻm, gã, khứa, etc. to express the patronizing, controlling or insulting.
V. CONCLUSION
Linguists state that the male and the female use a variety of different levels in their languages. They call the differences “genderlects”. Their works show that the female are more expressive in intonation; that they use more adjectives and intensifiers such as so, such, quite, vastly, too and more; that they make more precise determinations of colors; that they employ more fillers, such as umh, uh huh, well and you know; and that they more often use affectionate address







terms, such as dear, darling, honey, and sweetie. The language of the female is indirect rather than direct, and men may initiate more “unilateral” (in comparison to “collaborative”) topic changes in interaction.







VI. SUMMARY
Language has continuously changed and developed from the very simple form to more complicated one due to the social factors of interest, among which gender should be noted and studied officially in both sociology and sociolinguistics. Gender has made some contribution to the variable and evolution of languages. Gender plays some role in affecting language used by people of both sexes. Through language people communicate with each other to perform their social activities such as greeting, addressing, thanking, arguing, promising, refusing,







requesting, apologising, joking, commenting, etc. which are sometimes defined by gender paradigms. More and more scientific works have been done on the relationship between language and gender so far.
VII. EXERCISES
1. Is there any difference between the language of both sexes?
2. How are the languages of the male and the female?
3. What are the identifiable markers of gender in a typical enlightened society?
4. What is genderlect?
5. Why do linguists study gender in their works?






Good luck!