Language & Gender Earliest work --> Sex differentiation - Carried out in Europe and other western countries

- Interest in anthropological research - Examined phonological and lexicogrammatical structures - Large focus of the research is the existence of different pronouns or affixes specific for men and women - Uncommon in European Languages Gendered Pronoun Differentiation Germanic languages: English, Dutch --> gender differentiation in 3rd per sg Romance languages: French, Spanish --> gender differentiation in 3rd per sg & pl Semitic languages: Arabic, Hebrew --> gender differentiation in 3rd & 2nd per sg, pl Japanese -- Distinct levels of formality - must take into account the social status with you are conversing Formal Pronoun -- (men and women) watashi - Highly formal (men and women) watakushi Less formally -- atashi (women), boku (men) - men play up their masculinity by using the pronoun ore Japan does appear to be going through a change - High school girls are more often using boku because they say if they use atashi, they cannot compete with their male peers. - Some feminists have been using boke to refer to themselves Japanese forms are beginning to cease to be sex-exclusive Traditional tribal societies --> men and women use a whole range of different vocabularies - Carib Indians (inhabited present day Dominica) - When European explorers encountered these native they remarked that it seemed as if the men and women were speaking two different languages, but were able to fully understand the opposite gender's language.

- Contemporary tribe in Brazil that spoke Karaj - More differences between language used by males and language used by females than any other language - The sex of the speaker is marked phonologically - Clearly defined social roles between men and women - These roles contribute to tribal identity Sex-exclusive differentiation vs Sex-preferential differentiation - First suggested by Ann Bodine - Unlike sex-exclusive, sex-preferential is not absolute - Instead, they are matters of degree - The linguistic 'exotica' examined thus far has all been sex-exclusive differentiation - Sex-preferential differentiation: - Women speak closer to the standard or prestige dialect than men - Women use a cooperative style while men use competitive Both sex-exclusive and sex-preferential differentiation are highly culture specific - Acquiring them is an important part of what it means to act like a 'proper' man or woman - Gretchen Fortune created the first written manual for the Karaj language - She documents a boy who was never corrected on his proper gendered language usage in the home Sex vs Gender <-- biologically found (genes, gonads, hormones) Major notion: Sex: binary Gender: continuum <-- socially constructed (learned) more masculine, more feminine, most masculine, most feminine * more male, more female, most male, most female Gender is psycho-social and should always be considered in the context of social relations between people. For every 30,000 births, there is 1 intersexed infant "Doing Gender" -- behaving like a proper man or woman (West & Zimmerman, 1987) Men "tend" to be more aggressive than women, but what are the components of aggression?

- More males convicted of violent crimes than women -- Why? - Does testosterone trigger the rise in aggression in men? - Or does aggression give rise to higher testosterone levels? Disputed claims in Sociobiology - woman are born to be better with language - men are innately better with visual/spatial things (1) Girls stylistically go through the stages of language development a little earlier than boys (2) Girls are less likely to have language-related disturbances, like stuttering and reading difficulties (3) Right & left hemispheres of the brain tend to be less specialized in function in girls and women than boys and men (less lateralized) - men and women undergoing the same head trauma (stroke, tbi), women will have a lesser difficulty with language impairment than men - This difference in lateralization is not innate, baby boy brains actually tend to be less lateralized than baby girl brains - Baby boys and girls are spoken to differently - Research suggests that baby girls are talked to more often Folk Linguistics - ideas about speech held by those who are not specialists in language analysis (a mixture of fact and fiction) -> characterize men as direct, harsher, less willing to reveal emotions, more impersonal, more likely to use slang, more assertive, more likely to promote their own ideas -> Characterize women as less forceful, softer in voice, more personal, likely to talk more, more polite, more grammatically correct, less inclined to promote own ideas Children: Boys Speech vs Girls Speech Girls: exhibits more devices that serve to facilitate interaction and to reinforce what others said, both provide continuity of the interaction Boys: exhibits devices to get attention and to initiate a line of activity

Children in Conflict Talk Boys: more "heavy-handed" fashion, more self-assertive statements, and exhort dominance Girls: more collaborative discourse and negotiation as strategies to mitigate conflict

Topicalization in Gendered Speech All-Women Groups Home & family 28% Social issues 21% Personal/family finances 12% All-Men Groups Mixed-Sex Groups Home & family 22% Work related 25%

Work related 39% Recreation 21%

Patterns of Control in Gendered Discourse T = introduction of a new topic x = a comment within that topic Male Pattern__________________Female pattern T____________ T____________ x x T____________ x T____________ x x x x x T ____________ T____________ x x T ____________ x x

Assignment 11 1. Germanic and Roman languages have less sex differentiation than other languages. Does this mean that gender identity is less important in English-, Danish-, or French-speaking cultures? Why or why not? 2. What kinds of problems can occur when sex and gender are considered the same? 3. Tell what differences in topic control (topicalization) you have noticed between your interactions with the same sex and the opposite sex.