Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

Language and gender, Language and variation

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Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

Introduction

Language is a defined way that human beings speak among themselves, ensuring that a proper

communication is achieved within the members of a particular group. Language is a formal

written and organized way of communication among many people, who can be from the same

country or region, whereas dialect is special tone and language that defines a specific group of

people. Linguistic varieties that distinguish people according to their grammar, vocabulary and

pronunciation (Trudgill, 2002). English forms part of the social dialects since it is used by

educated people around the world. Social groups can be defined by their specific dialects.

Dialects are used to define specific groups of people according to their occupation, education,

residence, racial, cultural, religion and ethnic backgrounds. The mentioned factors have been

found to influence how people speak, act and behave. People in the same occupation such as

doctors, teachers, lawyers, etcetera have a unique dialects that enables them to communicate.

In school, teachers communicate in a way that they are able to share their experiences in learning

from one another, their ability to relay information to their students and the ability to cover the

course content within the required time. teachers qualify as sociolinguistic groups because they

have a distinct way of communicating, for example, when speaking among themselves they have

unique terminologies such as lesson plan, pass mark, assignment, schemes of work among

others. These terminologies are strictly meant for the teachers and only they can understand.

School presents an environment where children are able to learn formal ways of communication,

writing and reading. When children go to school they only have informal knowledge of their

languages and dialects. Teachers are bestowed with the ability of having a common method off
Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

explaining and demonstrating concepts in a manner that can be easily understood. In this paper,

we will discuss the language and gender, and language and variations among the teachers in Iraq.

Social background of Iraq teachers

Iraq is a country where English language learning is mandatory for the science and technology

field. Most of the teachers in Iraq learn and teach English as the second language. Students in

Iraq learn English just like any other non-native English speaking country in the world. Students

depend on the teacher expertise in mastering the language to help them advance the languages.

grammar, punctuation and sentence construction differs from male and female teachers

depending on their back ground.

Language and gender

Language learning is one of the major factors considered in education sectors to promote

learning. Language and gender are interdisciplinary areas of study that study language

differences by gender, sexuality and sex. The concept of diatomic and basic sexes overcame the

gender criticism in the seventies. Comprehensive language, culture and identity in terms of

gender studies analyzes, the sad consequences of a common language, ”showing“ logic that

encodes gender differences in language, ”for analyzing gender differences . Other works are

looking for ways using language to reproduce, naturalize, and challenge. Gender-specific

ideologies, starting with various scientific disciplines such as potentiality, narrative, critical

discourse, rhetorical analysis and metaphor, were used in the field of cell biology to study other

gender aspects in a process that is a meaningful way of studying the biology of the genitals

(Tagliamonte, 2006).
Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

During the late 1960’s women empowerment on going against the discrimination on gender

based orientation in terms of social and economic empowerments began in the U.S. The problem

with the exaggerated concept of difference is that, it is important that women not only assimilate

to male or general norms, but at the same time feminist scholars must document and explain the

value of attitudes and behaviors that have long been considered “women. Feminist scholars

should strive to unify the differences between men and women (Mills & Mullany,

2011). Language and gender studies have seen significant expansion to encompass sexual

orientation, ethnicity and multilingualism, and, to some extent, class, involving analyses of

spoken, written, and signed gendered.

Social class and gender

Studies have demonstrated that women are more intelligent when it comes to language use as

compared to men. Women mature faster than men; their biological orientations allow women to

have more verbalities than men. Women are known to pronounce better than men. According to

Amir et al., (2012), men tend to demonstrate low confidence in language since the society views

them as inferior when it comes to language as compared to women.

In teaching men and women speak differently. Morphology experiences differences in gender

pronunciation. For example, among the Indian American tribe, men pronounce bread as [dfajtsa]

and women pronounce bread for [kjajtsa]. Among the Indian languages, Bengali women use [l]

initials and men uses [n] initials when pronouncing some words (Holmes & Wilson, 2017).

Different languages have different word shapes due to the different affixes used by men and

women. Among the Chiquitano language speakers, men use longer words as compared to women

to women equivalent words (Holmes & Wilson, 2017).

Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

Female teachers tend to have a clear grammar in their sentences when compared to men. Male

teachers have been found to use more vernacular in their teaching than women. Male teachers are

associated with a 32% negation as compared to women (1%), negation language feature.

Women in all professions are viewed to use standard grammar of up to 90-95% of their speeches

(Holmes & Wilson, 2017). In school setting, female teachers have been observed to be more

disciplined and orderly as compared to their male counterparts, this is due the societal settings

where boy child misbehaviors were tolerated, but girl child misbehaviors were quickly corrected.

Language and variation

Language users exhibit variations in speech. Language variations are the language differences

observed in a social group (Holmes & Wilson, 2017). According to Gumperz, variations in

languages are brought about by very small variations that help in differentiating between social

groups(Chambers et al., 2002). Among the teachers in Iraq, teachers experience language

variations according to the level of education that they teach. A nursery school tutor is restricted

to language that is easily understood by the kindergarten kids. Primary teachers have specific

variations that distinct them from other teachers. Tertiary and institution of higher learning tutors

are distinctly defined by the level of students they are teaching.

Teachers also have variations according to the subjects they teach (Hornberger & McKay, 2010).

A medical teacher will pronounce a language differently according to the experience levels.

Pronunciation of consonants is viewed to have different pronunciation among teachers. For

example, some teachers pronounce singing as (singing) and (singin).

Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

Factors contributing to linguistic variations

In my study I found that social group contributed to linguistic variations. teachers belong to a

social group , clear variations in terms of languages, vocabularies and grammar exists between

the upper, middle and lower classes of teachers. In this study I defined the upper class teachers to

be higher institutions tutors, middle class were secondary school teachers and kindergarten were

the low class teachers. Age was another factor that I considered, to cause linguistic variations.

Younger teachers had more standardized grammar in languages as compared to older teachers.

According to accommodation theory, a speaker should speak in a manner that the speech

converges towards the audience (Chambers, 2007). Teachers develop the convergent speech to

enable them deliver the course content to their students in a way that they can understand.

English teachers for example, use the same speech and even pronunciations to signal the same

understanding. Contextual style is employed in conveying language among the teachers

(Coupland, 2007).

Language variations occur majorly on the occupation rather than the gender variations. However,

gender variations are viewed as important factors that brings along distinctive features of the

language punctuation, grammar and sentence constructions(Beebe, 1980. In teaching, male

leaders are viewed to dominate the talking, while women are less dominative when it comes to

dominating communications. The patterns and influence of language emerge from the social

context. The background of a teacher will be directly translated to the children’s language

performance. For example, an English native, hired in Iraq to teach, is more likely to expose the

children to more advanced and standard grammar, punctuations and sentence structures as

compared to an Iraq teacher who learned English and teaching the Iraq students English.
Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

Regarding social information, every lexical, phonological and syntactic selection has a gender

perspective. Formal and informal conveyance can be gendered. How teachers teach in school

determine the gender and the language used. For example, female teachers are viewed to be less

jovial and most of the time strict in terms of course content delivery. Male teachers on the other

hand, are fond of sharing jokes and stories to the students in class. Every time a teacher speaks,

from the language, we can deduce the geographical, social and cultural background of an

individual. Multi linguistics enables people and teachers to teach a wide variety of subjects in

Iraq. A teacher with monolinguistic background has limited chances in the teaching sector.

In conclusion, language is very important in every aspect of the world. In this study I found that

there is a gender difference that exists in terms of language difference. Women tend to use fewer

words while communicating than men, men uses longer words as compared to women, when

communicating the same things. On the other hand, language variations exist among individuals

of the same social class. The variations are contributed by factors such as age, gender, social

class, accommodative theory and convergence speech. Teachers therefore develop variations

existing due to the factors highlighted above. Iraq teachers therefore tend to experience

challenges while teaching languages to their students, due to the factors that limit their childhood

background in learning languages, however, utilizing convergence speech allows the teachers to

have a common understanding of the learning resources and objectives. The study therefore

recommends that more factors that contribute to gender variations in languages should be

explored.
Running Head: Language and gender, Language and variation

References

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Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (Eds.). (2002). The handbook of language

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Chambers, J. K. (2007). Sociolinguistics. The Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology.

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Holmes, J., & Wilson, N. (2017). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Routledge.

Hornberger, N. H., & McKay, S. L. (Eds.). (2010). Sociolinguistics and language education.

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