LCS PRESENTATION GROUP GENDER & AGE

AHMAD HIDAYAT ITA SAFITRI YULINDRI JAYA NINGRUM

09 SA REG

Gender and Age

The linguistic form used by women and men contrast to different degree behavior of women and men differs. It is clamed women and men are more linguistically polite than men.

Gender-exclusive speech differences: non western communities:

The Amazon Indians provide an extreme example; the language used by a childs mother is different from her father language. Because men must marry outside their own tribe, and each tribe is distinguish by a different language. In this community women and men speak different languages. In Montana, for instance, there are pronunciation differences in the Gros Ventre American Indian tribe. Where the women say [ kjatsa] for bread the men say [da]. In this community if a person uses the wrong form, the older members of the community consider them bisexual. In Yana, a North American Indian language, and Chiquita, a South American Indian Language, some of words used between men are longer than equivalent words used by women and to women, because the mens forms sometimes add a suffix. In Japanese, too some of the mens forms are longer, while female forms of nouns are frequently prefixed by O-, a marker of polite of formal style. Gender differences in language are often just one aspect of more pervasive linguistic differences in the society reflecting social status or power differences. If a community is very hierarchical, the speech of women men may be just one dimension of more extensive differences reflecting the social hierarchy as a whole. Gender exclusive speech forms reflect gender- exclusive social roles. The responsibilities of women and men are different in such communities, and everyone knows that, and knows what they are.

Gender-preferential speech features: social dialect research

Women and men do not use completely different forms. They use different quantities or frequencies of the same forms. In all the English-speaking cities where speech data has been collected, for instance, women use more ing [i] pronunciation and fewer in (in) pronunciations than men in words like swimming and typing. Both the social and the linguistic pattern in that community is gender-preferential. Though both women and men use particular forms, one gender shows a greater preference for them then the other. In that example women tend to use more of the standard forms than men do, while men use more of the vernacular forms than women do.

Explanations of Womens Linguistic Behaviour

Why do women use more standard forms than men?

The social status explanation

Some linguists have suggested that women use more standard speech forms than men because they are more status-conscious than men. The claim is that women are more aware of the fact that the way they speak signals their social class background or social status in the community. The fact that women interviewed in New York and in Norwich reported that they used more standard forms than they actually did has also been used to support this explanation. Women generally lack status in the society. And so, it is suggest, some try to acquire it by using standard speech forms, and by reporting that they use even more of these forms than they actually do.

Womans role as guardian of societys values

Women are designated the role of modeling correct behavior in the community. Predictably following this argument, society expects women to speak more correctly and standard than men, especially when they are serving as models for childrens speech. This explanation of why women use more standard forms than men may be relevant in some social groups. But it is certainly not true for all. Interaction between a mother and her child are likely to be very relaxed and informal, and it is in relaxed informal contexts that vernacular forms occur most often in everyones speech.

Subordinate groups must be polite

The womens use of more standard forms is that people who are subordinate must be polite. Children are expected to be polite to adults. Women as a subordinate group, it is argued, must avoid offending men, and so they must speak carefully and politely.

Vernacular forms express machismo

Men do not use more standard forms because they think that vernacular forms carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness. They also think that standard forms tend to be associated with female values of feminimity.The fact that Norwich men tended to claim that they used more vernacular forms than they actually did, while the women didnt supports this explanation too.

The Influence of the interviewer and the context The women interviewed shifted much more dramatically than the men did from more to less standard forms when they were speaking to a friend rather than a stranger. Men on the other hand tend to be less responsive to the speech of the other and to their conversation needs. Age-graded features of speech One of the most obvious speech differences between women and men is in the pitch of their voices. Most people believe this difference develop at puberty.

Age grading and language change When a linguistic change is spreading through a community, therell be a regular increase or decrease in the use of the linguistic form over time. For an innovation a form on the increase this will show up in a graph as a low use of the form by older people and a higher use among younger people. For a form which is disappearing just the opposite will be true. Younger people will use less of the form and older people more.