SOCIOLINGUISTICS

LESSON 7

INSTRUCTOR: LE NGUYEN NHU ANH

LESSON 7
GENDER
AND AGE
Lesson Contents
Key takeaways:

Gender-exclusive speech differences: highly structured communities

Gender-preferential speech differences: social dialect research

Gender and social class

Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour

Age-graded features of speech

Age and social dialect data

Age grading and language change

Sex vs Gender
- Sex: categories distinguished by biological characteristics.
- Gender: categories distinguished by socio-cultural behaviour, including speech.
Gender-exclusive speech differences: highly
structured communities

- Women and men do not speak exactly the same way:

- Different languages; OR
- Same language but certain linguistic features specific to either
women’s or men’s speech (pronunciation, word-shape (morphology),
vocabulary)
- Gender differences in language => a part of linguistic differences
reflecting social status or power differences
- Gender-exclusive speech forms reflect gender-exclusive social roles.
Gender-preferential speech differences:
social dialect research

- When women’s and men’s roles overlap => speech

forms overlap => difference in frequencies or
quantities of the same forms
- Gender-preferential speech differences: one gender
shows a greater preference for particular speech
forms than the other
- Women tend to use more of the standard forms than
men do
Gender and social class
- Men use more vernacular forms than women
- The women’s speech can be close to that of the men in the
same group => Class membership seems more important than
gender identity
- Women’s speech can be close to that of women in another
social class => They identify more strongly with women from
the next social group than with men from their own social
group
- When women use more of a linguistic form than men => the
standard form – the overtly prestigious form.
- When men use a form more often than women => a vernacular
form – not admired overtly by the society as a whole
- Evident from very young age
Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour
The social
status
explanation

Some Guardian of
alternative society’s
explanations Explanations values
of women’s
linguistic
behaviour

Vernacular
Subordinate
forms
groups must
express
be polite
machismo
Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour
The social status explanation
- Women are more status-conscious than men => use more standard
speech forms
- The way they speak signals their social class background/social status
- Standard speech forms associated with high social status
- (Suggested) women without paid employment use more standard
forms than women with paid employment <= Evidence suggests the
opposite
- Standard or prestige forms represent linguistic capital which people can
use to increase their value or marketability in some contexts
=> Higher proportion of standard speech forms among white collar
professional workforce => language as a social resource for constructing
a professional identity
Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour
Woman’s role as guardian of society’s values
- Society tends to expect ‘better’ behaviour from women than from
men
- Women to be role model of correct behaviour
- Women expected to speak more correctly and standardly than
men
- This explanation not true for all social groups
- E.g. interactions between a mother and her child likely to be
relaxed and informal => vernacular forms more suitable,
standard forms typically associated with more formal and less
personal interactions
Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour
Subordinate groups must be polite
- People who are subordinate must be polite
- Children expected to be polite to adults
- Women, as a subordinate group, must avoid offending men by
speaking carefully and politely
- Using standard forms = protecting ‘face’
- Argument: Women’s greater use of standard forms not only related to
face-protection needs but also due to women’s sensitivity to their
addressees
- Implication of this explanation: women’s behaviour is aberrant and has
to be explained. Men’s usage as the norm => Odd => Why don’t men
use more standard forms
Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour
Vernacular forms express machismo
- Vernacular forms carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness =>
preferred by men => vernacular forms associated with covert prestige
=> standard forms tend to be associated with female values and femininity
- In the society, a preference for vernacular forms = a reaction to overly influential
female norms (e.g., boys vs their female teachers)
- Problems: vernacular forms used by women of working class, vernacular used by
all speakers from all social classes in less formal contexts, relaxed situations,
etc.
Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour
Some alternative explanations
- Miscategorisation (woman classified by their husband’s social group).
- The influence of the interviewer and the context
- Age, education, sex of interviewers
- Women as cooperative conversationalists => speech accommodation
- Men less responsive to the speech of others
- Interviewers as strangers: When people do not know each other well, they tend to
speak in ways that reflect their social roles rather than relating as individuals =>
standard speech forms.
=> Women as status-conscious individuals using more standard speech forms to
ensure they are perceived as socially statusful
- The ‘same’ behaviour may be interpreted quite differently by different researchers
(theoretical framework, beliefs about relationship between language and social factors.
Age-graded features of speech
- Age-graded patterns: speech features which vary at different
ages (pitch, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, slang)
- Physical factors
- Social and cultural factors
- Slang is the linguistic prerogative of young people => odd in the
mouth of an older person
- Signal membership of a particular group
Age and social dialect data
- As people get older their speech becomes gradually more standard, and then later it becomes less standard
and is once again characterized by vernacular forms.
- Frequency of vernacular forms is high in childhood and adolescence, steadily reduce in middle age (conform to
societal pressures), gradually increases in old age (social pressures reduce)
- The use of vernacular forms is not attributable to age along, but also solidarity markers
- In their middle years people are most likely to respond to the wider society’s speech norms by using fewer
vernacular forms
Age grading and language change

Two possible interpretations of the data:

- The pronunciation of standard [t] in medial and final position may be an age-graded feature.
- Alternatively, the pronunciation of standard [t] may be changing in New Zealand speech.
Age grading and language change
- In a spreading linguistic change:
- A regular increase or decrease in the use of the linguistic form over time
- A form on the increase: low use by older people and higher use among younger people
- A form disappearing: low use by young people, higher use by older people
- Before studying the patterns of change, knowing the normal distribution of stable forms through a community is
important
 References

• Bodine (1975) on Chiquita(no). See also www.et-

hnologue.com
• Bortoni-Ricardo (1985) on Brasília
Resources • Bradley (2011) on Yanyuwa
• Cheshire (1982a, b) on Reading speech
• Cheshire, Kerswill and Williams (2005) on (th)-
fronting in Milton Keynes
• Coates and Cameron (1988) on explanation in
social dialectology
• Downes (1998) on age-gradingEckert and
McConnell-Ginet (2013) Ch. 10 on Detroit
adolescents’ speech