Recently in our linguistic
anthropology class, we have been discussing gender. I thought it was interesting
just how different we talk. We are exposed to the different ways we talk almost
every day, but I think it's safe to assume that many people don't think about
the differences between the speech of male and females too extensively. Our
textbook "Language, Culture, and Society: an Introduction to Linguistic
Anthropology" gives a few examples in the differences of what we say, and
how we say it. For example, the text notes: "If one analyzes intonational
contours as four relative pitch levels, men tend to use only three...women
range typically includes all four" (Slazmann, 2015). The text gives the
example of how males and females speech might fluctuate differently when saying
the phrase "Oh, that's terrible."
The text goes further than just how we fluctuate our speech to analyzing the
specific word males and females are more prone to using in their dialogue. It
is noted in the text that usually women
use expressive adjectives of admiration such as divine, or fascinating more than the
male counterpart. Also noted is that men typically use "fashionable color
names" less than women. "As a rule, men's color vocabulary is much
less discriminating, and hence, somewhat poorer than women's" (Slazmann,
2015). I personally believe that the different words and fluctuations we use
are built upon form the culture we are exposed to, much like stated in the difference (subculture) theory we discussed in class, or as the text states
"men and women live in different linguistic worlds basically because they
live in different subcultures" (Slazmann, 2015). Finally, the text also
states that, at least in the U.S., differences in word choices are seemingly
growing smaller between men and women.
References
Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2015). Language,
culture, & society: An introduction to
linguistic anthropology (6th ed.). Boulder: Westview Press.
Sam,
ReplyDeleteI also thought that the topic of gender and language was very interesting. I had never thought about the relationship between language and gender until reading this chapter. I agree completely that many people don’t think about the differences between the speech of males and females. What I found ironic was while we were talking about language and gender in this class my sociology professor mentioned the same ideas. The sociology textbook brought up an idea that we didn’t get to cover in class. It mentioned how the English language seems to assume that the default category for all human experiences is male. Examples being referring to the human race as “mankind” or having root words such as “man-made” and “manslaughter.”
This topic interested me as well, especially the ways in which women and men were said to differ, as I found that I apparently speak in some situations like a man would, at least according to the text and the video we watched. The video mentioned that yes, there would be outliers, but I do wonder if perhaps the number of 'outliers' has increased since the 80s, as a lot of things seemed to have changed socially since then, at least to some degree. I also found what Olivia mentioned interesting (and what you mentioned in class, I believe?), how so many terms and jobs default to a male phrasing, like 'mankind', 'policeman', etc., and how people are beginning to look at the terms as outdated, which they really are.
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