Gender, Power, and Language

What is gender?

Gender Norm/Role: A set of behaviors, attitudes, and emotions that are generally socially expected for men and women in a given culture

Gender Stereotype: Oversimplified, but strongly held beliefs about characteristics of men and women (how you expect someone to act based on their perceived gender)

How is gender socially constructed?

Lakoff's features of "Women's language"

• Hedges, (super)polite forms, tag questions, speaking in italics, empty adjectives, hypercorrect grammar, lack of a sense of humor, direct quotations, special lexicon, question intonation in declarative contexts

O'Barr and Atkins claim that these features are more appropriately attributed to those that lack power

Where else besides the courtroom might we encounter powerless language?

Kiesling's Language of Men

• any features of language are influenced by power asymmetries
• ideology power is particularly strong in fraternities and serve to constrain identity construction
• discursive devices were used to construct particular identities valued by the competitive, hierarchic fraternity structure

What other ways might language be used in identity construction?

Gender in Grammar

Linguistic Origins of Grammar

• According to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher Protagoras used the terms masculine, feminine, and neuter to classify nouns, introducing the concept of grammatical gender.
• Gender as a grammatical category

Gender and gender agreement

• Greek: o andras (the masc. man), i gyneka (the fem. woman), to pedhi (the.ntr. child)
• German: der man (masc. man), die Frau (fem. woman), das kind (ntr. child)
• French: l(e) home (masc. man), la femme (fem. woman)

Gender Pronouns and Correlates

• English: he left, she left, it left
• Gender correlates with other categories like humaness, agentivity, and animacy.

Examples of gender correlates? When do we use 'it' as a pronoun?

Some history

• Language was a particular feature and target of Women’s feminist movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
• Focus on elements of language and culture that disadvantaged women
• Ex: chairman, spokesman, barman, generic he

Consider the following:

• Masculine form: master
• Feminine form: mistress
• Masculine form: bachelor
• Feminine form: spinster

Does gender in grammar affect the way people think about gender?

Do gender and sex differences affect the way people engage in conversation?