Early work on gender variation:
- One of the earliest studies was Fischer’s study (1958) of the /n/ variable, pronunciations like singing [ŋ] versus singin’ [n]. This is a part of communicative competence of many speakers of English.
Fischer conducted interviews with young children, twelve boys and twelve girls, aged 3–10. He noted their use of -ing ([ŋ]) and -in’ ([n]) in a very formal situation, in a less formal interview, and in an informal situation.. In the most formal situation, 10/12 (83%) of the girls showed a preference for the -ing form, while only 5/12 (42%) of the boys did.
- The usage was also associated with specific verbs. Verbs describing everyday activities, were much more likely to be given -in’ endings than more ‘formal’ verbs. Fischer’s conclusion is that ‘the choice between the -ing and the -in’ variants appears to be related to sex, class, personality (aggressive/cooperative), mood (tense/relaxed) of the speaker, to the formality of the conversation and to the specific verb spoken.’
- In terms of its findings on gender, this study fit into a pattern of studies which showed that girls/women used more standard variants than boys/men of their same social class in the same social contexts. -> ch. 8.
The Fourth floor:
- Another first wave study, perhaps the most well-known of all, is Labov’s small-scale investigation of the (r) variable. He believed that it was more likely to occur as the formality level in speech increased, and would be more likely at the ends of words (floor) than before consonants (fourth).
- Labov’s lower middle-class speakers out-perform his upper middle-class speakers on word lists and pairs. Labov calls this a cross-over in the graph and explains it as an instance of hypercorrection. Hypercorrection occurs when individuals consciously try to speak like people they regard as socially superior but actually go too far and overdo the particular linguistic behavior they are attempting to match.
Variation in Norwich:
- The aforementioned work by Trudgill (1974) is also a seminal work of the first wave. Trudgill investigated sixteen different phonological variables in his work in Norwich, England. He demonstrates, in much the same way as Labov does in New York City, how use of the variants is related to social class and level of formality. Trudgill’s analyses the variables (ng), (t), and (h).
Variation in Detroit:
- A Detroit study (Shuy et al. 1968) and Wolfram’s follow-up to that study (1969) are other first wave studies. The Detroit study investigated the use of multiple negation as a linguistic variable in that city. It showed that there is a very close relationship between the use of multiple negation and social class. No class uses one variant of the variable to the exclusion of the other, regardless of circumstances.
- Wolfram and Fasold (1974, 80–1) argue that in the case of (r) absence, we have an example of what they call gradient stratification, that is, a distribution with gradient or gradual gaps between the trend lines on the graph; the divisions between the social classes are not as great/wide as they are in sharp stratification. (phonological variables.) We here have sharp stratification, that is, a clear break between a particular pair of social groupings. ( grammatical Variables.)
Variation in Glasgow:
- So far we have seen the factors: social class, age, and gender. Another study which looked at all of these is Macaulay’s study (1977) of five variables in Glasgow: the vowels in words suc as hit, school, hat, and now and the occurrence of glottal stops as replacements for [t] in words like better and get.
- Macaulay found a clear correlation between variation and social class, but in addition he was able to make certain further interesting observations. He found his two lowest classes to be much alike in behavior. With males, the greatest difference between classes was between his top class and the second-highest class. Whereas with females the greatest difference was between the two intermediate classes. Increase in age also seemed to be associated with an increase in the difference between social classes. Finally, when individual rather than group behavior was plotted for each variable, a continuum of behavior was exhibited in each case.
Linguistic constraints on variation:
- As noted linguistic variables may correlate not only with social variables but also with other linguistic features, that is, there may be linguistic constraints too.
- In their discussion of linguistic variation, Wolfram and Fasold present data from an earlier study by Fasold (1972) to show that it is possible to state how two or more factors, or constraints, interact to affect the distribution of a variable.
- Constraints may also mix phonological and grammatical features. This situation is the same for all social classes, but the actual amounts of deletion vary from class to class.
- Using information similar to the kind just presented, Wolfram and Fasold (1974) go on to show how it is possible to take a phenomenon like cluster simplification and predict certain kinds of linguistic behavior. They consider four environments where cluster simplification occures:
- before a word beginning with a consonant (test program);
- before a word beginning with a vowel (test idea);
- before a suffix such as -ing (testing);
- involving a final consonant other than t (e.g.,k) before a suffix such as -ing.
- Two studies of the French spoken in Montreal are of interest because they suggest some of the complexities we face in trying to describe the distribution of variants of a variable in one case and the persistence of a rare variant in another.
The Second Wave of Variation Studies:
- First wave studies focus primarily on attention to speech as a motivation for variation within one speaker’ performance. The second wave studies began to focus on speaker agency. While maintaining the centrality of vernacular speech, such studies sought to explain the variation using ethnographically determined social categories and cultural norms.
Social networks in Belfast:
- The work of the Milroys is credited as the beginning of the second wave. It looked at certain aspects of speech in three working-class areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Milroys were able to show how a stable set of linguistic norms emerges and maintains itself in a community. Lesley Milroy calls these vernacular norms, norms which are ‘perceived as symbolizing values of solidarity and reciprocity rather than status, and are not publicly codified or recognized’.
Gender variation in the second wave:
- A second wave study which exemplifies a focus on linguistic variables in gender variation is Cheshire (1978). This study focuses on the (s) variable in the speech of two groups of boys and one of girls in Reading, England. The (s) variable in this case is the extension of thirdperson singular verb marking to all other persons, for example, I knows, you knows, we has.
Jocks and burnouts:
- Any discussion of the second wave of variationist studies would not be complete without the inclusion of Eckert’s work on adolescents in a Detroit suburb, work which will also be featured in the discussion of linguistic change in chapter 8. This study shows the use of ethnography not only to ascertain the social categories to be used as variables in the study, but also to interpret the findings of the linguistic analysis.
The Third Wave of Variation Studies:
- What separates third wave from second wave studies is the shift in perspective from investigating how language reflects social identity (often articulated in terms of membership in particular social categories) to how linguistic practices are the means through which speakers position themselves as social beings.
- How do speakers/hearers link linguistic features to particular social meanings? Moreover, these social meanings are not necessarily – in fact, often not at all – related to traditional macrosocial categories such as race, socio-economic class, age, or gender.
- The social meanings of particular ways of speaking are best viewed as interactionally constructed rather than being somewhat statically associated with particular social groups.
- Inherent in the third wave approach to variation is a different perspective on the original idea that focus on speech is the key to variation in an individual’s performance. They have noted that there are a range of factors which influence speaker choices about what variants to use, and that variation is more than moving up and down the continuum from formal to informal registers
Stance:
- We can conceptualize stancetaking as how interlocutors position themselves with regard to each other, the form and content of an utterance, and ideologies and macrosocial identity categories (see Jaffe 2009). Variation in language use can thus be analyzed as part of stancetaking in addition to being correlated with social variables or social networks.
- Reports by Podesva (2004, 2007) on the stylistic variation in the speech of a man called Heath in different settings is illustrative of such third wave research. In these studies, features of Heath’s speech (aspiration of intervocalic /t/ and falsetto) are analyzed with regard to their use in the construction of a ‘diva’ personality in one context, and a competent and educated medical student in another
- Another study which exemplifies how style and stancetaking work is Goodwin and Alim (2010). This study combines an analysis of stylistic variation with a multi-modal approach to the study of communication, including non-verbal stylizations such as hand gestures.
- While third wave studies tend to move away from the sociolinguistic interview as a data source, work by Schilling-Estes (2004) illustrates that interview data also contains stylistic variation which shows speakers’ stancetaking. Thus while analyzing the interactionally motivated variation of a conversation, we must also continue to be aware of how language varieties and features index ideologies and social categories – not as fixed and static markers, but as social constructions which are just one path within a larger pattern of social norms and indexical relationships.
Sex categories
Sex categories are based on the biological distinction – not always completely clear – between ‘male’ and ‘female.’ There may also be additional culturally specific categories that define people who do not fall easily into these first two categories.
- The term transgender is often used to talk about people who are transitioning or have transitioned from one sex category to another, or have biological attributes of a sex category which does not match their gender (see below) or of both sexes.
- The term cisgender is used to talk about people whose sex category matches their gender.
Gender
Gender, although based on sex categories, is culturally constructed. What is considered to be masculine or feminine differs from one society to another. It is also usually conceived of as being on a continuum of masculine and feminine, that is, you can be more or less masculine or feminine, while sex categories are generally thought of as being discrete groups so that individuals must firmly and permanently belong to either one or the other category
- Within contemporary social theory, gender identities, like other aspects of identity, may change.
- In performances of gender , speakers draw on ideologies about what it means to be a man or a woman; for instance, women may give each other compliments on their appearance.
Sexuality
Sexuality has to do with an individual’s identity in terms of his or her sexual activities. For example, certain types of masculinity rely heavily on heterosexuality while other identities explicitly involve gay masculinity.
Sexist language:
- Can language itself be sexist?
- Work in the 1980s on this topic addressed issues such as the so-called generic ‘he’ and the use of ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ to refer to all people.
- Another of the issues involved in answering this question has to do with words that encode sex categories, most commonly sex category–marked names of people in specific occupations, for example, fireman, stewardess, and waitress.
While it is not inherently sexist to make reference to the sex category of a person, the problem with such words is that they could influence what professions we see as being appropriate for (only) men or (only) women.
- Today, there is a growing awareness, at least in some circles, that subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, distinctions are made in the vocabulary choice used to describe men and women.
- If societies view changes than those linguistic changes are inevitable.
- Romaine (1999) ‘Those who had adopted more gender-inclusive language did not necessarily have a more liberal view of gender inequities in language.’
- Further, there is not necessarily consensus about what constitutes sexism in language.
Grammatical gender marking:
- As Mills (2008) notes, the word for ‘minister’ in French is masculine (le minister), so it is difficult to refer to a female minister. Further, the norm in languages such as French and Spanish is to use the masculine plural for groups containing both men and women.
- Gender distinctions such as he–she can often be avoided so it probably does not follow that languages with gender distinctions must be sexist, which would also be a clear argument in support of the Whorfian hypothesis. It is the people who use languages who are or who are not sexist.
Language change:
- If there is a relationship between language and worldview, regardless of which direction we believe this influence flows, than we would expect that language would reflect (or have formed) changing gender roles.
- We can see this in some asymmetries of pairs of words. Pairs of terms such as master– mistress, governor–governess, and bachelor–spinster are different in more ways than simply indicating male and female. While a master is the man in charge, the word mistress is commonly used to refer to the female lover of a married man.
- All deliberate attempts to change or modify languages to free them of perceived (hetero)sexism or make them gender-neutral are a form of language planning, (chapter 14) Sometimes the goal appears to be to force language to catch up to social change; and at other times it seems designed to bring about social change through mandating language change. Whatever it is, it requires us to accept a very Whorfian view.
- Some small changes in heterosexist language practices can also be seen.
Discourses of gender and sexuality:
Discourse can be described as ways of representing facets of the world, that is, the processes, relations, and structures of the world, as well as feelings, thoughts, and beliefs about the social world These connected ways of thinking constitute ideologies.
Some common discourses:
- Discourses about gender and sexuality influence and shape how we think about sex categories and the people who belong in them, as well as other categories having to do with sexuality.
- Among Discourses of gender and sexuality that we can identify, the discourse of heteronormativity. This Discourse requires an assumption of heterosexuality and the stigmatizing of gay and lesbian identities.
- Heteronormativity has been shown to privilege not only heterosexuals, but also certain gender roles within heterosexuality. Discourses of heteronormativity produce what they call the
heteronormative hierarchy, which favours monogamous and reproductive heterosexuality in which both partners adhere to normative gender roles.
Deficit, dominance, difference and identities.
Before beginning an historical account of the scholarship on gender and language, we first need to specify what we mean when we talk about differences between men’s and women’s speech.
- Gender exclusive language : situations in which men and women have different ways of speaking that could be deemed different languages, or at least distinct and named dialects of a language.
- Gender preferential language : certain ways of speaking may be preferred by one gender, or are stereotypically associated with being feminine or masculine.
Women are also said not to employ the profanities and obscenities men use, or, if they do, use them in different circumstances or may be judged differently for using them. Women are also sometimes required to be silent in situations in which men may speak.
Women’s language:
- Lakoff 1973, Language and Woman’s Place. As this title implies, this work focused on how women’s language revealed their place in society – a place that was generally seen as inferior to that occupied by men. This account of what came to be called Women’s Language (WL) has in retrospect been called the deficit model, as many of the features Lakoff discusses position women as deficient to men: less confident in what they say, and less able to participate in serious activities in the social sphere.
- They used ….
- Empirical studies have shown that some of the features Lakoff suggests are typical of WL are not necessarily present in the speech of women.
It is not so much about the forms men and women use but rather about the different meanings that men and women communicate through their use of language. Nevertheless they do have systematic differences.
- Women tend to modify their language to whether they are talking to men of other women.
Deficit:
- The way women speak is deficient or inadequate when compared to the male norm.
- It uses men’s speech as the baseline or measuring stick when examining women’s language, and as a result, concludes that women’s language is communicatively less effective.
- This led to the erroneous view that something was “wrong” with women’s language and that women are less confident in what they say.
- Lakoff’s early claims (1973) have been associated with the deficit view of women’s language use.
- Assuming such a thing as “women’s language” exists, features of “women’s language” put women in a communicative double bind whereby women must decide whether “to sound helpless and ladylike or to sound powerful and unladylike” (Finnegan & Rickford 2004, 413)
Dominance:
Lead to feminist linguistics:
Difference:
