Gender and Language

Language and Communication ANTH 2301 Gender and Language 2018 saw the addition of the term "mansplaining" to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The term refers to "what happens when a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about something he knows nothing about, thinking erroneously that he is more knowledgeable than the other person" ("Words We're Watching" 2018). The term originated from a 2008 piece by feminist blogger Rebecca Solnit. In the piece "Men Explain Things to Me," Solnit talked about a party event when she told a man that she had just finished writing a book on a certain photographer. The man immediately cut her off to tell her about a very significant book he had read on the same photographer in The New York Times that had just come out. The man went on to provide a detailed description of the book before Solnit's buddy eventually stepped in to clarify that Solnit was, in fact, the author of the book in question. Following Solnit's piece, several female authors discussed comparable situations in their jobs, classrooms, and romantic relationships; this trend became known as "mansplaining." Did you ever see someone mansplain? Have you ever given someone the runaround? The phrase itself contains a gender and linguistic concept. The theory goes that speech patterns differing across sexes both reflect and perpetuate gender inequity. Many authors have resisted the term "mansplaining" in recent years, claiming that not all males communicate with women in this manner all the time. Some contend that in their interactions with women, many males are far more considerate and aware of the dynamics of power. There are others who contend that White women with privilege have a tendency to mansplain to guys, whether they be salespeople, waiters, or people of colour in general. Some argue that elderly individuals talk down to younger people, or the other way around. Have you ever been irritated with a friend or family member who keeps interrupting you? Ever notice how certain individuals seem to make everything they say sound like a question by ending their sentences with a rising intonation? What about someone who dismisses what you say, rewords your concept, and then claims originality? Many individuals link these speech patterns to gender, namely the ways that men and women talk. Language ideologies are beliefs about how language functions that are specific to a culture, as was mentioned in the section on language learning. Language ideologies include the notion that American women and men speak in different ways. Linguistic study should determine whether this theory is accurate, but in American society, this notion has come to represent a common understanding of gender, power, and language. Inspired by the women's movement, linguists focused on how gender influences various speech patterns in the 1970s. Robin Lakoff makes the case that men and women are socialised to talk in different ways that elevate men and devalue women in her seminal work Language and Woman's Place (1975). According to Lakoff, women's speech is characterised by euphemisms, hedges, emotive language, and tag questions (such as "Don't you think?"). It is also too polite and unsure. Other linguists have discovered that, even in situations where the women are doctors and the men are their patients, males are considerably more likely to interrupt women than vice versa (Zimmerman and West 1975, West 1998). Based on these findings, Deborah Tannen (1990) described two completely distinct communication subcultures for American men and women by going beyond speech patterns. Tannen contends that when men and women communicate with one another, they are doing so across cultural boundaries and using various discourse expectations and motives. Women are more concerned in fostering social connections that will strengthen their solidarity than males are in using conversation to establish their place in the social hierarchy. Women establish verbal connection with their interlocutors, whereas males authoritatively report facts to them. The corpus callosum, the amygdala, and the hippocampus are three brain regions that are purportedly different in males and females, and these distinctions are commonly used in popular culture to explain why men and women speak differently. Gender-specific speech patterns become accepted as biological in this way. Similar to the backlash against the term "mansplaining," scholars are starting to contest the idea that men and women belong to distinct language subcultures with distinct motivations, speech patterns, and interpretations. In order to determine if popular beliefs about gender and language were supported by linguistic evidence, psychologist Janet Hyde performed a meta-analysis of hundreds of quantitative research (2005). Hyde was interested in exploring ideas of power as well as the belief that women are more submissive and talkative than males. Hyde concentrated on kid studies and discovered that there were no differences between males and girls in vocabulary, verbal reasoning, or reading comprehension. The likelihood of guys interrupting or speaking up was just marginally greater than that of girls. The inclination of girls towards collaboration and self-disclosure with their discussion partners was marginally greater than that of boys. Hyde discovered that the only notable distinctions were in the amount of time girls spent smiling and correctly writing words. How can we reconcile statistics suggesting very little difference in the speech patterns of boys and girls with research showing variations in the speech patterns of men and women? It may be argued that kids aren't fully socialised into the gender roles they've been allocated. The disparity may indicate that gendered speech patterns are cultural rather than biological, and that adolescence is still the most intensive stage of socialisation for young children. Furthermore, linguistic anthropologists' ethnographic study demonstrates that speech patterns linked to males and women are culturally related. Anthropologists working in Madagascar and New Guinea have discovered, contrary to popular belief, that men are associated with more cooperative, euphemistic, ceremonial speech, and women are expected to speak in a more confrontational and argumentative manner (Keenan [Ochs] 1974, Kulick 1992, both cited in Ahearn 2017). Therefore, the idea that men and women are biologically programmed to use language differently is refuted by both quantitative and anthropological studies. This leads us to the conclusion that any disparities in speech patterns between men and women are wholly cultural. Judith Butler, a literary scholar, contends that gender identities are enacted via language and other cultural practices, especially those that are body-centered, rather than being biological (1988). Therefore, whether they are aware of it or not, men and women socially act their gender identities when they talk in particular ways. Furthermore, humans enact complex gender identities through language performances that go beyond the simple binary of male and female. It's likely that you have a language philosophy that dictates how men and women communicate in your community, but do you consistently use the language style that corresponds with your designated gender? No one ever does. And some individuals seldom ever do. Over time, when these contradicting performances accumulate, the concept of gender itself may shift.