Year taken: 2012-2013
Professor:Walter Rybarckewicz
Class: INGL4290
University: University of Puerto Rico, Cayey Campus
Grace H.
Rodríguez Cruz
Professor W.
Rybarkiewicz
INGL4290
May 23, 2013
Language
and Gender: The differences between male and female
From the moment we begin to think, we
become fully aware of the social differences that consist being a girl or a
boy. We get to play with dolls and houses while the boys get the cars and the
skates. This however, marks the contrast of both sexes far beyond than just the
reproductive organs. It builds society as we know it: who does what and how is
it done. Better yet, how is it expect
to be done. In our language, we see this trend going on as well; whether you
are a man or a woman, you are socially programmed or pre-destined to be a
certain someone regardless of the taste or looks you carry. By the end of it
all, language has limited our ways of communication to the standards upon us
that we don’t even know when it happened. Why is it so wrong for a woman to
have a strong and explicit language and a man to have an emotional wreck? Why
are we brainwashed by just shunning upon this without questioning when it all
started to happen?
To understand the differences in our
daily lives, we have to remember or learn the meaning of “hegemony”. This is
defined as “the predominant influence, as of a
state, region, or group, over another or others” by online dictionaries. When
it comes to society, the masculinity and its dominance has been latent on the
fabric of history. M.Donaldson stated: “Its successful application to a
wide range of different cultures suggests that there may well be no known human
societies in which some form of masculinity has not emerged as dominant, more
socially central, more associated with power, in which a pattern of practices
embodying the "currently most honoured way" of being male legitimates
the superordination of men over women. Hegemonic masculinity is normative in a
social formation.” As we look back at
our social system, we see how being a masculine man gives the advantage and the
praise of a crowd; however, if there is
a man with femininity traits, the guy is almost certain to be mocked, bullied
and ridiculed in a constant matter by all the peers. Differently from the men’s
case, women have the option to follow the masculinity traits, but since the
social role is a feminine one for any lady, she will not be able to obtain the
same respect of a man, even if she does the same thing or surpasses a male
counterpart at tasks. So, when we look at this, we start believing that
embracing the femininity in social standards for a woman would be the best, but
this is erroneous. Female gender roles are tend to value less than male roles,
giving the sense of sensuality as priority and turning those who follow into
tools. Women have always been the “weakest”, giving the only good trait as the
child bearing and the pleasing of the male counterparts. How this decides the
way we speak and communicate? This has everything to do with it. In George Keith and John Shuttleworth’s “Living
Language” (p. 222), the following traits come
down as the difference in communication with people following the social
traits:
- women - talk more than men, talk too much, are more
polite, are indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag, ask more questions,
support each other, are more co-operative, whereas
- men - swear more, don't talk about emotions, talk about
sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each
other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation,
speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more.
Supporting
this, we find men’s competitive nature coming out in conversations when they
are interrupting other males or the few females who dare to talk in public. Dale
Splender adds to this problem: "The
crux of our difficulties lies in being able to identify and transform the rules
which govern our behaviour and which bring patriarchal order into existence.
Yet the tools we have for doing this are part of that patriarchal order. While
we can modify, we must none the less use the only language, the only
classification scheme which is at our disposal. We must use it in a way that is
acceptable and meaningful. But that very language and the conditions for its
use in turn structure a patriarchal order."
There have existed different types of talkative understanding: the
rapport talk and the report talk. This brings up the custom in language when
the male is a dominant speaker in any social activity. “The female style is
described as one of rapport, sympathy, intimacy and cooperation while the male
style is one of reporting, problemsolving, independence and competition (Talbot
2003: 475).”(Black and Seale 2009: 84) In this, Deborah Tannen has become an
expert of spotting the differences. She talks about her contrasts in the book
“You Just Don’t Understand” which talks about the eternal conflict of men and
women in how they think and they express verbally. In these contrasts we find:
Status vs.
support: For men, the world is a competition they have to rise as victors. The
communication of males mostly hangs on maintaining the prideful place and not
letting anyone stomp upon their domination. Women communicate with others to
create emotional bonds and comfort. The sharing of ideas and the vulnerability
of the process is deeply respected by the female roles.
Independence vs. intimacy: Men struggle in society to
maintain the independence they acquire on the daily conversations, keeping
count to express their knowledge and dominance. Women
tend to use the talking to make connections and preserve the intimacy between
the recipients. This explains the different points of view of a single
situation and to create misconceptions between the two in a relationship. This
will place the woman as nagging and persistent and the man as cold and
incommunicative.
Advice vs. understanding: Tannen expresses how a woman can
struggle with communicating men. Another example of this is the lack of
understanding from the counterpart. Sometimes a woman tends to approach a man
when she is not feeling well hoping to find some comfort; but on the contrary,
he might just give an advice to solve it instead of the sympathy she required.
This happens when men are used to others approaching to him looking for an
answer or a solution to a problem instead of a therapy session about life and
concerns.
Information vs. feelings: An example to this is the peers
and phone calls. A woman will keep herself on the phone talking about
insignificant events of the day, but the importance of the feelings experienced
in the situations. When it comes to a phone call of men peers, the conversation
is precise and straight to the point; detailing the important events that
happened or the details of the next meeting. Andrew Moore states to this: “Historically,
men's concerns were seen as more important than those of women, but today this
situation may be reversed so that the giving of information and brevity of
speech are considered of less value than sharing of emotions and elaboration. From
the viewpoint of the language student neither is better (or worse) in any
absolute sense.”
Orders vs. proposals: This
is a simple trait. Women love to answer indirectly and to talk about the
surroundings of a specific topic, but rarely enter any specific thing about
what she wants. Women like others to understand her without the clear image of
things. Men like to go straight to an answer without any wondering. This also
applies to giving orders.
Conflict vs. compromise: Tannen explains: “In
trying to prevent fights, some women refuse to oppose the will of others
openly. But sometimes it's far more effective for a woman to assert herself,
even at the risk of conflict. ” Giving in situations in the work place, a woman
may accede to a request but not be completely okay with it, getting to complain
later about it; while men resist it if they don’t find the situation suitable
to their liking.
When it comes to
insults of demeaning one another, women and men do it differently as well.
Moore introduces us to this topic with this: “This
is not just a gender issue - these are functions (or abuses) of language which
may appear in any social situation. But they take particular forms when the
speaker (usually) or writer is male and the addressee is female. In some cases
the patronizing, controlling or insulting only works because both parties share
awareness of these connotations. It is possible for the addressee not to perceive
- or the speaker not to intend - the patronizing, controlling or insulting.
Patronizing terms include dear,
love, pet or addressing a group
of adult women as girls. Note
that calling men boys or lads is not seen as demeaning.” But
when it comes to demeaning, men tend to be insulted by referring one another
with petnames or certain callings addressed to women. An example to this, we
share the many times used scene from movies where the Army Sargent insults his
cadets by calling them girls or sissies. This shows the lowering of men’s pride
to a status of women, which, socially recognized, is lower than men’s. For
addressing women as an insult, it is mostly used a connotation related to
promiscuity and lack of personality such as “slut”, “tart,” “bitch”, and so on…
Taboo language has always been found way more acceptable for men to say it than
women since the females are educated as proper and educated with rich words to
replace the many insults that men use as everyday language. “Coates (2003: 196)
argues that ‘men’s use of taboo language in telling their stories also performs
toughness’. Yet in our interview data we found that, rather than performing
toughness, the use of swear words expressed feelings of frustration felt by
some men with the limited potential of language to express the strength of
their emotions. Swearing can be considered as a style for doing illness that
implies a stereotypical and possibly (though not necessarily) hegemonic
masculine identity. ‘Bloody’ occurred 53 times, and ‘shit’ occurred 27 times in
the male interviews. Other swear words were ‘bugger’ (8); ‘blimey’ (3);
‘bollocks’ (3) and ‘bastard’ (2). There were also particular expressions such as
‘bloody hell’ (10) and ‘fucking awful’ (5). In the female interviews ‘bloody’ occurred
only 10 times, ‘shit’ three times and ‘bollocks’ once”(Black and Seale: 97)
Just as there are more names to
call-out a woman than men, there also exists terms to define the intelligence.
A woman called “Blonde” may either be to state the fact that her hair color is
yellow or to doubt her intelligence. Many “blonde jokes” exist that create the
stereotype of stupid woman; just like many others jokes that count on making
fun of women for it to have a fun structure to it (like the kitchen jokes about
women belonging in the cleaning and cooking rather than to be an equal with men
in the house. It tends to give the feeling of servitude for the man’s pleasure
and to question the place of women in the standards of men.) But there is no
such thing as man jokes. There is no fun in ridiculing men by just being them,
unless a certain man has the connotation of female gender role.
Are there any differences in the male
and female brain? Can this be proven? “For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from
Northwestern University and the University of Haifa show both that areas of the
brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during
language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain
when performing these tasks.” Says the 2008 news of ScienceDaily stating
how through the fMRI testing girls showed more development in the use of
language in more difficult tasks of recognition; giving a better understanding
to the abstract language from the females. “The researchers found that girls still
showed significantly greater activation in language areas of the brain than
boys. The information in the tasks got through to girls' language areas of the
brain -- areas associated with abstract thinking through language. And their
performance accuracy correlated with the degree of activation in some of these
language areas…To
their astonishment, however, this was not at all the case for boys. In boys,
accurate performance depended -- when reading words -- on how hard visual areas
of the brain worked. In hearing words, boys' performance depended on how hard
auditory areas of the brain worked.” But even with this amazing difference, it is still
unknown if the changes in the brain are permanent and keep up with the growing
up of these children. This may explain situations like giving directions. Women
tend to explain this way: “Turn
left on Main Street, go one block past the drug store, and then turn right,
where there's a flower shop on one corner and a cafe across the street.” While men, being in
the same situation, might just be more precise in the directions instead of
relating the surroundings.
The curiosity of this phenomenon in
sociolinguistics is more of an interesting topic for women than what it is to
men researchers. And why is that? Maybe it is because of the realization of the
female understatement and other experiences push these minds into the knowledge
to why and how. In the end, we don’t really have proof of a biological
difference between the two sexes when adulthood is reached; but we surely have
a difference in what society marks in us since very little and continue to remember
just like if we were still ignorant children who need to be reminded of their
place. However, this unfortunate event has developed the theories and analysis
in what gender linguistics are and how to understand one another better than
what we have ever done before. Will this one step closer give a better
reasoning in society and promote the justice women and men need? All the
answers to this and more, lie in the fabric of our future, but not so distant,
time.
Works
cited:
Moore, Andrew. "Language and Gender." Language and Gender. Universal
Teacher Website, 2002. Web. 2013.
Charteris, Jonathan, and Black and Clive Seale. "Gender
and Language." Men and
Emotion Talk: Evidence from the Experience of Illness (n.d.): n. pag. Gender and Language. Equinox
Publishing, 2009. Web. 2013.
Language Appear Biological." ScienceDaily, 5 Mar. 2008.
Web. 2013.
M.
Donaldson. "What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?" Faculty of Arts - Papers (1993).
"Hegemonic Meaning." The Free Dictionary. N.p., n.d.
Web.
No comments:
Post a Comment