Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Language and Gender EMAG Clips (Differences (Differences between men and…
Language and Gender EMAG Clips
Beliefs about Language and Gender
People say that women speak more than men and hey are more emotional in their speech which can date back to the 18th Century.
In our culture, women are seen as polite and delicate and men are seen as blunt and come to the point. But there are places in the world where they are the other way around.
For example, in Papua Neuguinea women have a special speaker event called a 'cross' where they sit in their houses and scream abuse about their husbands (usually) for about 45 mins.
Sexism in English - the 1970s and now
There has been ideas that the english languae is a sexit languae since the 1970s and that there is a bias against women built in to it such as the grammar in the way that 'he' is used as a generic pronoun.
Many people think that we should have a gender-neutral language and we should abandon using 'he' and 'she' and use 'they' instead and job titles such as 'chairman' we should use 'chairperson'.
Doing gender - playing with social meaning
Individual things have a different sort of social meaning such as women smiling when they are in a positive conversation and smiling a little or not at all in a negative conversation.
Differences
'Gender differences' - are they about gender?
Gender differences aren't always about gender, but quite often gender isn't the real underlying cause. You get the differences because of something else linked to gender, e.g. the things that people do with their time such as women looking after their children.
Many people have a group of friends are usally the same sex as them. They are our refrence group: the people we spend most time with and care for the opinion of others.
Power: some gender differences are about power and status rather than gender itself. For example, the question of who talks more? and it isn't always females. Men in meetings can take dominance as they have a higher status.
Biological differences
There are differences in the male and female brains that will give of differences in the language they use.
Male brains are more strongly laterlised in language so it is all concentrated on one side of the brian where as with women it is more scattered.
Differences between men and women
Women in modern western societies are further ahead with language change.
Women are more cooperative and competative speakers than men, however it does vary.
Women have more verbal skill than men, however the evidence is very mixed.
Women and girls have a slight advantage when it comes to writing and reading at school
Why are people so interested in linguistic differences between men and women?
People are interested becuase they take them as symbols, sort of a metaphor, for the difference between men and women itself and that is a cultural expression.
The Importance of Identity
The reasons that people talk the way they do is to do with identity. Their identity is reflected in their language.
Future directions: where is the study of language and gender going?
Gender in language used to be mostly based around women's language but many people now are talking about men's language and the masculinity and how they talk. Also about seuality in language.
The social consequences of linguistic stereotyping
It matters if we have steryotypes about how men and women communicate becuase they can really influence people in areas where it makes a difference to people's life chances
It is also a problem when people belive that men and women can't comunicate with eachother. This is especially seen in sexual violence; can men tell when women don't want it? or do women have to say no to understand it?
It is also seen in education about who is better and who is worse at the language which has a problematic effect
Reclaiming the negative
There are ideas since the 1980s that we can take negative words and reclaim them by using them in a positive way and change what they mean so that they can be used positively and with pride. However the 'N word' is just not usable in that positive sense and also the words used about sex about women.