Languages and Worldview Textbook ADDENDUM

ADDENDUM Language and Gender The language use of signals people membership in particular communities or networks ( Nancy . Language , Culture , and Communication . Pearson , 2014 , 205 ) We will be addressing several aspects of gender and language . When you hear gender when it comes to language , you may think of Romance languages or German , and how their words have grammatical gender ( a table une table French , feminine ein German , masculine , una mesa Spanish , feminine ) We won devote too much grammatical gender in this part we will spend more time on it with guest speakers . What we will discuss is differences in conversational styles ( which may take us back into looking at how use grammar it won involve grammatical gender of nouns ) Lets start with an introduction by Anthony Watch the Video Do Women and Men Use Language the Same Way ?

Anthony , 2019 ) Video transcript Do men and women use language in the same way ?

This is an interesting question for anybody who a man or a woman , or anything in between , and who uses language . Its also interesting because there lots of false preconceptions about it , and a bit of research can perhaps challenge them . First let get the question clarified . We re talking here about language use . We re not talking about language systems , like Catalan , Spanish , French , German , whatever . Our European language systems are undoubtedly sexist . They oblige me if speaking Spanish , for example , ifl say , Estoy old , that viejo , and the woman has to say , and we re obliged to say if we re a man or a woman by that language system , Which in that respect is quite fascist , as Roland put it . That one question though . It a little different though when we look at what people do with the language system when they speak . Do men and women use the language system in the same way ?

For example , that variation is systemic , but it not quite the same way as the observation , for example , that in Scotland schoolgirls tend to say water and pronounce the schoolboys tend to say wa er and go depending on where they 64 ADDENDUM 65 are in the social class . Both the men and women speakers there recognized that the system requires them to say water and got , but what they actually do is different , and it different according to . or , the way they do it correlates with whether or not they re men or women . Okay . So thats the kind of stuff that we interested in , in social linguistics of variation . There are all the cultural variables of gender that come on later . We know that with we become , we mix these things , and that that studying of gender as a cultural phenomenon is quite different from the biological physical reality of or women . The problem for us with that though is that the is itself linguistic it already within the linguistic purely linguistic , there are many other things happening , but you can separate the language variables from that kind of gender . 80 it can be done wejust keep things simple at this level of social linguistics . Classical studies of the way men speak and women speak , for example by Robin looking at American English , find that there are quite patent differences . For example , men use fewer lexical hedges or , rather , a little ?

All of these things would be said more by women than by men . Men tend to use fewer question tags in English . Question tags are these things at the end of the sentence , where you say , is it ?

do you ?

do I ?

Okay ?

There a thing called rising intonation in English that can occur with declarative sentences , so I can say , The sky is The man would tend to say , The sky is A woman in a conversation might say something like , And the sky is blue ?

with rising intonation at the end as if it were a question . not a question , but it a discursive strategy inviting the other person to comment on it , deny it , add information , continue the conversation . Men attempt to give fewer as well . are the things in a conversation when you say , yeah , right , really , oh , right , and tell the other the you re following them and they re invited to continue , that you re supporting them . Men don do a lot of that . Women tend to do rather more . And so all of these variables tend to indicate that men and women are approaching a conversation in different ways . Men are there to exchange information and to affirm it or deny it . Women are there to enjoy a social activity , that is , to engage in a conversation or a chat . That is an act of mutually supporting each other it a nice thing to do together Completely different perspectives on what a conversation is and hence on how you use language , One possible manifestation of citing here from the textbook by what happens with the , okay ?

So says , right , it citing a study , okay , that when a woman uses , it tends to mean , a man uses , mean agreeing . So the same expression , more or less , has these two different ways of being interpreted . Consequently , men often believe that women are always

66 ADDENDUM agreeing with them and then conclude that it impossible to tell what a woman really thinks . Whereas women get upset with men who never seem to be listening , okay , because they re not getting the same and they re only getting an when there is actually agreement , Is this a law , does this happen all the time ?

Who knows ?

But its interesting to observe whats going on in the that are occurring around you , When we look at conversations , some of the data rather surprising , I mean , we sort of assume that women speak more than men or speak for longer . It tends not to be true , What you do find is that men tend to be the ones who take the initiative they tend to be the ones who start the conversation , They tend to be the ones who change topic , They tend to be the ones who interrupt another speaker , often to . to change the topic . So in all those things men are far more active in the conversation and assume positions of power , okay ?

Now , women who rise to positions of power sometimes imitate this , and as they do they tend to bring down their occupation for time the amount of time that they speak to be about the same as men . But these are studies on American academic English in the , in the United States in the 605 and . I think it important to stress there is no fatality . Now , are men and women today what they were 20 years ago ?

I don think so . Are was it the situation 100 or 200 years ago ?

Certainly not , So , the way men and women use language , especially when they re in conversations , could be quite different now . And I invite you to discover this by attention conversations that are happening all around you every day , Read this article about the speech of women in Japan A New Perspective on Language in Japanese An Interview with Ide Diglossia Watch the Video What Is Diglossia ?

Anthony , 2019 ) Video transcript What is diglossia ?

from Greek means two gloss , the tongue , Two languages , Not to be confused , however , with bilingualism , which is from Latin , two , the tongue , Two languages .

ADDENDUM 67 There is , however , in English social linguistics a systematic difference between the two terms , diglossia and bilingualism . Usually , bilingualism is the capacity of the individual , of a person , to speak one , two , or than , say bilingualism , okay ?

You could call them , that a nice term for describing people , and French and social linguistics talks about plurilingualism for the capacity of the individual . Now , diglossia is something quite different . Diglossia is a social situation it not concerning individuals , it concerns a society in which there are two languages related in such a way that they have different social functions . Okay ?

That diglossia a social situation bilingualism , plurilingualism is concerned with the capacities of the individual . Now , a standard definition of is Charles Ferguson , it long and complicated , but anyway , diglossia is a relatively stable language situation . And important it not a transitory thing , it not a bad thing , it something that we observe occurring over centuries in many parts of the world . So , a situation in which , in addition to the primary dialects of the language , there is a very divergent , highly codified ( often grammatically more complex ) superposed variety . So we have these two kinds of varieties happening within the same language one would be dialects , the other would be learned , standardized , the language of literature , Then he goes on of written literature either of an earlier period or in another speech community , which is learned largely by formal you get to this other one by going to is used for written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any section of the community for ordinary conversation . So it easier to understand if you go to Zurich , for example , where you got people speaking Swiss German in the street and on television , on local television , and then going and studying in standard German and learning to write standard German , and they write down their spoken language . These two varieties of the language with different social functions , and they are highly separate . Another classic example would be Arabic in Morocco , where we do have classical Arabic for religious functions , certainly for the King , and then spoken Moroccan Arabic in the street , although Moroccan Arabic does get into the press in that case , okay , So those are cases where the one language has varieties with different social functions . The functions are traditionally called and in English . stands for high , but you don say high stands for the written , official social functions . stands for the spoken , vernacular social functions low , okay . We try to avoid high and low because that was Charles Darwin mistake , when he talked about the higher species , that led to all sorts of racism and misunderstandings . and are there not in the sense of being superior but of them simply being different . That why the decision has been made to use and as letters rather than as .

68 ADDENDUM Now that a strict definition of diglossia . There a more relaxed definition , and that would be when the two varieties in question don have to belong to the same language , okay ?

So in parts of the complex society around us here , we find Spanish being used for official functions . Certainly , here , 50 years ago , Spanish would be absolutely the variety and Catalan would be the variety . They are different , but yet they would satisfy most definitions of diglossia . So that would be the relaxed definition , or the loose definition the two varieties , two different functions . The varieties don have to belong to the same language they can , but they don have to , okay , point out that now with the standardization of it become very much the variety around us find situations where Catalan occupies functions in official society , certainly Barcelona . Spanish can move to for many of the immigrant groups and occupy those functions , and then we have another Catalan , which is that of the farmers and the traditional working class , with its many regional varieties , and that becoming an as well . So it bejust and There can be other languages , or the same language can move into those two positions if , uh , if the society takes on that sort of form . Um , when we . we use . Catalan linguists do like the theory of diglossia and the basic reason is this diglossia sort of accepts it accepts that language is going to have different power relations , and that this is a stable and normal thing . Whereas their fight has long been for Catalan to assume full functions , and the official language policy in Spain is for all languages to have full functions . So they want a situation that they call , which is and full capacity in everything . Why not ?

That can happen there no law against it . The simple observation in social linguistics is that it happen , that we have stable in language functions . So , if you find that you haven got it , it not because you re an aberration , it just because your societies tend to suggest that we can have asymmetric language functions without any disaster befalling anybody . The other thing that , um , that my students will say is that we don want our language to have an means powerless means power , Give me power , empower me , make my language big and strong and written and Which , of course , is what any linguist would do because linguists are the people who do that sort of work , Great work for ourselves , yeah . All right , but be careful . Over history , the languages that die are often those that are in the position . Look no further than classical Greek or Latin . All the romance languages that we speak had an function in relation to Latin . Which one won out over history ?

The varieties , not the English itself is the result of a situation where we had Old French in we had varieties in And did repress and kill over time ?

Quite the opposite . The result , the English that we have is a merger of the two but with a ADDENDUM 69 rising influence , I suspect over time , of the The came up and absorbed the , So it not true that it bad , historically , to be in an position . An position is close to where the people are and economic activity is and where people vote , after all . In our course we look , of course , at certain things that depend on diglossia . Diglossia is like the basic social situation that sets up the possibility of , for example , a lot of that we find . And then if you think of the example of where , uh , Hungarian and German were in contact we found that the language shift that we saw there was a classic case of what we now know and would call diglossia , where German had the official function , the functions , Hungarian had the social life , the association with territory over time . And in that particular case , because of the political shift of the village , the took over and displaced in that particular situation , There are no fatalities . It not always bad to be in the position , and and relations in diglossia can continue and be stable for many centuries , That the lesson , at least , of English social linguistics . You welcome to find . Revitalizing Indigenous Languages Supplemental video Revitalizing Indigenous Languages , GPA Interactive 2016