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GENDER AND LANGUAGE
Sociological interfaces
Training Handout
Good evening Dr. Phil,
I have a project to do and I need help in it. I was searching your web site and I couldn't find anything. This is a the question, "How is language linked to gender." I wrote some but still need some more ideas if you can help me please?
Thanks,
Nemat
There are several places where gender and language interface in
sociology.
When sociologists study the process of socialisation, they not only look at how the biological
organism, human individual, becomes human (a learning process) but also
at how society and culture reproduce themselves when their human biological
carriers die.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that, as we learn a language, our sense of reality
is shaped. Therefore our attitudes of what is masculine and feminine
are taught to us mainly through our process of learning a
language.
Language then
stays as part of culture long after its first speakers die, and its changes
often lag far behind other social changes.
The word “gender”
(which is the social difference between masculine and feminine) is borrowed
from grammar, and is different from “sex” (which is the biological
difference between male and female).
Our culture
has a strong prejudice that these are polar opposites and that there are
only two categories.
Biologically that is untrue.
We have people
who have an extra Y or X chromosome, and cannot be classed as either male
or female. We have fraternal twins whose zygotes merged in the womb,
and born as a single person, leaving one set of DNA in one part of the
body (eg the skin, hair and external elements) and another DNA in another
part of the body (eg the internal parts).
Our variations
in genitalia are surprisingly very minimal (when scrutinised carefully),
and even our variations in secondary sex characteristics are minor compared
with the over 99 percent of our physical makeup which is the same for males
and females.
By using specific
drugs we can induce secondary characteristics in individuals, giving them
the alternate characteristics.
Our language,
in contrast, is set up to see these minor differences, male and female,
as polar opposites, and categorise people that if they are not in one then
they are in the other.
Careful observation
of how we speak indicates that men and women use slightly different tone
systems.
Tone
is used in some languages (Chinese and Akan) to vary vocabulary.
In
English, it is used to nuance the formal structure of our
sentences.
Men are more
predisposed to use three tones while women tend to use five tones in their
day to day speaking.
This is a learned
difference, and people who are not tone deaf who learn and practice the
language can learn to speak with the alternate tone system.
English, unlike
many other languages, has two words, he or she, but no word
meaning either.
This is a cultural variable.
My
second language, Akan Twi, has one word “no” meaning both he and
she.
In
English, we cannot use the word, “it,” because that is for non
humans.
In written
English, I prefer to use the word, “s/he” to overcome that when the
gender is unknown or either.
Amharic, the
main language of Ethiopia, has a feminine (anchi) and a masculine
(anti) form of "you."
Thai (Siamese)
has two different forms of "thank you," depending if the speaker is male
(kop-kun-krap) or female (kop-kun-kaa).
Furthermore,
we can trace many elements of our language which identify feminine characteristics
as second rate, inferior and subservient.
The gender
biases we learn from the time we learn our first language, is often unconscious,
but based on those turns of phrase.
There
are now conscious attempts to remove gender bias from our language
practices.
Hurricanes
were once all named with feminine names, but now are masculine or feminine (but
most ships are still feminine).
Close examination
of language usage, however, indicates that we still have a long way to
go. Phil .
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