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L25A: Language, Gender and Sex 2006-2007 Lecturer: Emmogene Budhai-Alvaranga Email addresses: [email protected] or [email protected] L23A Website: www.mona.uwi.edu/dllp/courses/l25a Please Turn off all cellular phones & pagers 7/17/2015 1 Topics - the Session 7/17/2015 Sex vs. Gender Gender and its socio-cultural context; its place in society. 2 Sex vs. Gender 7/17/2015 Sex: produces categories distinguished by biological characteristics - man vs. woman Gender: produces categories which are based on socio-cultural behaviour - male vs. female 3 Gender identity (Holmes, 2001:303) 7/17/2015 Women - adapt to ‘masculine context’ eg. women in certain jobs – police force Men - adapt to ‘feminine context’ eg. Men working in clothing stores or hairdressing salons 4 Women’s and Men’s language 1. Gender-exclusive speech differences: 7/17/2015 difference in languages used (eg. given by Holmes 2001: 150) differences in linguistic features (eg. found in Jespersen 1922) 5 Rochefort (1655, cited in Jespersen, 1922:237) “the men have a great many expressions peculiar to them, which the women understand but never pronounce themselves. On the other hand, the women have words and phrased which the men never use, or they would be laughed to scorn. Thus it happen that in their conversations it often seems as if the women had another language than the men.” 7/17/2015 6 The repetoires of personal pronouns of men and women are different as follows: Pronoun: First person (I) Formal Plain 7/17/2015 Men’s speech Women’s speech watakusi watasi watakusi atakusi* boku watasi atasi* 7 Japanese cont’d Second person (you) Men’s speech Women’s speech Formal anata anata Plain kimi anata anta* anta* (*marks variants of a social dialect) 7/17/2015 [source: Mesthrie, Swann, Leap, Deumert 2000:219] 8 Women’s and Men’s language 2. Gender-preferential speech features They use same speech forms – difference in quantity or frequencies of use. Women tend to prefer standard forms, men prefer vernacular forms. Example: women produced more ‘th’ than alternatives [f], [t], [d] 7/17/2015 9 Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour: 7/17/2015 the social status explanation different patterns of socialization dominance/Subordinate group must be polite. 10