Pn Nik
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UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SABAH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT COURSE: TE2053 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF LANGUAGE LECTURER: PN. NIK ZAITUN NIK MOHAMED MIDTERM: ‘DISCUSS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND GENDER USE’ STUDENT: MARCONIE BELLA BIN LADZIM YT2006-6772
Discuss The Relationship Between Language And Gender Use. Nowadays, we can see the general growth of feminist work in many academic fields. It is hardly surprising that the relationship between language and gender has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In an attempt to go beyond "folklinguistic" assumptions about how men and women use language (the assumption that women are "talkative", for example), studies have focused on anything from different syntactical, phonological or lexical uses of language to aspects of conversation analysis, such as topic nomination and control, interruptions and other interactional features. While some research has focused only on the description of differences, other work has sought to show how linguistic differences both reflect and reproduce social difference. Accordingly, Coates (1988) suggests that research on language and gender can be divided into studies that focus on dominance and those that focus on difference. In many of the world’s languages, all the nouns are divided into two or more classes which require different grammatical forms on the noun and/or on certain other words grammatically linked with the noun or nouns in particular sentences. German, for example, has three gender classes, which require different forms for associated determiners and adjectives. Thus, ‘the table’ is der Tisch, ‘the pen’ is die Feder, and ‘the book’ is das Buch, where der, die, and das are all different forms of ‘the’; ‘an old table’ is ein alter Tisch ‘an old pen’ is eine alte Feder, and ‘an old book’ is ein altes Buch. A gender language must have at least two gender classes, but it may have more-eight, ten, or possibly even more. In some gender languages, we can often guess from the form of a noun which gender it belongs to; in others, we can often guess from its meaning which gender it belongs to; in very
many
languages,
however,
we
cannot
guess,
because
gender
assignment is arbitrary. In German, for example, a noun which denotes a male or a female usually (not always) goes into the der gender or the die gender, respectively, and nouns with certain endings usually go into a predictable gender. After that, though, the gender of the remaining nouns is impossible to guess. In Navaho, nouns denoting humans usually go into one gender, nouns denoting round things into a second gender, nouns denoting
long stiff things into a third gender, and so on, but not all nouns can have their gender guessed in this way. It is important to realize that grammatical gender need have nothing to do with sex. In German (and other European languages), there is a noticeable (but imperfect) correlation between sex and gender assignment; however, most nouns denote things that have no sex, and yet they must still be assigned to a gender. In many other gender languages, sex plays no part at all in gender assignment. English, it is worth pointing out, has no gender. We have a few sex-marked pronouns like he and she, and a few sex-marked nouns like duke and duchess but we have no grammatical gender. Sociolinguists (and others) often use the term gender in a very different way, meaning roughly ‘a person’s biological sex, especially from the point of view of the associated social role’. This usage must be carefully distinguished from the strictly grammatical sense of the term. A young lady in Germany belongs to the female gender (in this second sense), but the noun Fräulein ‘young lady’ is grammatically neuter. So I assume that, the relationship between language and gender use is based on empirical data of men’s and women’s speech. It should be operated with a complex understanding of power and gender relationships, so that women's silence, for example, can be seen both as a site of oppression and as a site of possible resistance. We need, or should I say must looks specifically at the contexts of language use, rather than assuming broad gendered differences. It involves more work by men on language and gender, since attempts to understand male uses of language in terms of difference have been few, thus running the danger of constructing men's speech as the ‘norm’ and women's speech as ‘different’. It also aims not only to describe and explain but also to change language and social relationships.
References
1. Coates, J. and D. Cameron (Eds.) (1988) Women in Their Speech Communities.
Harlow: Longman.
2. J. Gumperz (Ed.), Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
3. B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.
4. Rockhill, Kathleen, 1987, Gender, Language, and the Politics of Literacy. British
Journal of Sociology of Education 8:153-167.
5. Hamlet, Janet, 1986, Function of “You Know” in Women’s and Men’s speech,
Language in Society 5:1-22.
Discuss The Relationship Between Language And Gender Use. Nowadays, we can see the general growth of feminist work in many academic fields. It is hardly surprising that the relationship between language and gender has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In an attempt to go beyond "folklinguistic" assumptions about how men and women use language (the assumption that women are "talkative", for example), studies have focused on anything from different syntactical, phonological or lexical uses of language to aspects of conversation analysis, such as topic nomination and control, interruptions and other interactional features. While some research has focused only on the description of differences, other work has sought to show how linguistic differences both reflect and reproduce social difference. Accordingly, Coates (1988) suggests that research on language and gender can be divided into studies that focus on dominance and those that focus on difference. In many of the world’s languages, all the nouns are divided into two or more classes which require different grammatical forms on the noun and/or on certain other words grammatically linked with the noun or nouns in particular sentences. German, for example, has three gender classes, which require different forms for associated determiners and adjectives. Thus, ‘the table’ is der Tisch, ‘the pen’ is die Feder, and ‘the book’ is das Buch, where der, die, and das are all different forms of ‘the’; ‘an old table’ is ein alter Tisch ‘an old pen’ is eine alte Feder, and ‘an old book’ is ein altes Buch. A gender language must have at least two gender classes, but it may have more-eight, ten, or possibly even more. In some gender languages, we can often guess from the form of a noun which gender it belongs to; in others, we can often guess from its meaning which gender it belongs to; in very
many
languages,
however,
we
cannot
guess,
because
gender
assignment is arbitrary. In German, for example, a noun which denotes a male or a female usually (not always) goes into the der gender or the die gender, respectively, and nouns with certain endings usually go into a predictable gender. After that, though, the gender of the remaining nouns is impossible to guess. In Navaho, nouns denoting humans usually go into one gender, nouns denoting round things into a second gender, nouns denoting
long stiff things into a third gender, and so on, but not all nouns can have their gender guessed in this way. It is important to realize that grammatical gender need have nothing to do with sex. In German (and other European languages), there is a noticeable (but imperfect) correlation between sex and gender assignment; however, most nouns denote things that have no sex, and yet they must still be assigned to a gender. In many other gender languages, sex plays no part at all in gender assignment. English, it is worth pointing out, has no gender. We have a few sex-marked pronouns like he and she, and a few sex-marked nouns like duke and duchess but we have no grammatical gender. Sociolinguists (and others) often use the term gender in a very different way, meaning roughly ‘a person’s biological sex, especially from the point of view of the associated social role’. This usage must be carefully distinguished from the strictly grammatical sense of the term. A young lady in Germany belongs to the female gender (in this second sense), but the noun Fräulein ‘young lady’ is grammatically neuter. So I assume that, the relationship between language and gender use is based on empirical data of men’s and women’s speech. It should be operated with a complex understanding of power and gender relationships, so that women's silence, for example, can be seen both as a site of oppression and as a site of possible resistance. We need, or should I say must looks specifically at the contexts of language use, rather than assuming broad gendered differences. It involves more work by men on language and gender, since attempts to understand male uses of language in terms of difference have been few, thus running the danger of constructing men's speech as the ‘norm’ and women's speech as ‘different’. It also aims not only to describe and explain but also to change language and social relationships.
References
1. Coates, J. and D. Cameron (Eds.) (1988) Women in Their Speech Communities.
Harlow: Longman.
2. J. Gumperz (Ed.), Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
3. B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.
4. Rockhill, Kathleen, 1987, Gender, Language, and the Politics of Literacy. British
Journal of Sociology of Education 8:153-167.
5. Hamlet, Janet, 1986, Function of “You Know” in Women’s and Men’s speech,
Language in Society 5:1-22.
