Jim: The music’s last Knocker. I’m off down the Pier’ead if there ain’t nothin’ better on offer.
Knocker: Bleedin’ rozzer crawlin’ round down there. Come down ours instead.
(Holmes, 2008, p.167. e.g.8)
One New Zealand study mentioned that women avoid such a casual form because they are considered to be losing their moral values if they use it.
2.2. Women’s language
Lakoff (1975) found some linguistic features that women and men tend to use. His findings of characteristics of women’s speech are “lexical hedges or filler (e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see), tag questions (e.g. it’s nice weather, isn’t it?), rising intonation on declaratives, “empty” adjectives (e.g. charming, cute), precise color terms (e.g. magenta, aquamarine), intensifiers such as just and so (e.g. I like him so much), “hypercorrect” grammar (e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms), “superpolite” forms (e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms), avoidance of strong swear words (e.g. fudge, my goodness) and emphatic stress (e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance)” (Holmes, 2008, p.298).
2.3. Discourse stratum and lexico-grammatical stratum
These are the main features of the differences between women and men speaking English below.
- Interruption
Zimmerman and West (1975) found that men interrupt more than women do in mixed-sex conversations (Poynton, 1990). They recorded natural conversation between man and woman. Result was that 96% of interruption was created by a man whereas only 4 % was made by a woman (Holmes, 2008, p.306, table 12.2). Based on Zimmerman and West’s study, Yumiko Ehara (1993) conducted an experiment between college students in Japan. She asked students to have a daily conversation. Then, it was found that men interrupt women 71 times while women interrupt men 31 times (Inoue, no date). Zimmerman and West (1975) concluded that it was not considered rude even though men interrupt in conversation. Therefore men have a right to control conversations. This might cause some issues around gender discrimination. Even in society, gender is superior to social classes when it comes to the language they use. For instance, when doctors and patients are the same sex, doctors interrupt more than patients. However, when doctors are women and patients are men, patients tend to interrupt more. Consequently, it appeared that men are likely to control their conversations.
- Back-channeling
One New Zealand study shows that women provide better feedback than men in their conversation. Women tend to use “hmm”, “mm”, “I see” or “yeah” to express their interest in the conversation ( Poynton, 1990). These back-channel noises are often heard in woman to woman conversation. Also, women often use nodding to show their positive respect and understanding of others. Another study described that women tend to develop ideas of previous speakers rather than challenging them. Women are likely to wait until the other person’s conversation topic has finished and then move on to next topic. On the other hand, men are more likely to interrupt others and change topics if they are not interested in the previous topics. This comes from the belief that it is the men’s role is to speak and the women’s role is to support (Inoue, no date).
- Hedge/ Tag questions
Lakoff found that women tend to use hedges such as: “well”, “you know” and “sort of“, more than men. She states that these hedges express their lack of confidence. When women are unsure about the fact, they tend to use them to show their uncertainty or tentativeness to avoid losing face. However, people also use hedges to show that they are going to say something important and they want people to pay attention.
Also, Lakoff found that women use tag questions more for some purposes. Firstly, tag questions express uncertainty as well as hedging effects. Secondly, tag questions are used as a way to facilitate. Third, they often soften critical comments. Finally, they are used as confrontational and coercive devices (Holmes, 2008). According to Holme’s research (1984), it was mentioned that percentages of using tag questions between women and men are significantly different. Particularly, women use tag questions in facilitative ways much more than men to express positive politeness.
2.4 Sex differences in adolescence speech
According to Edina Eisikovits (1981), there is a connection between age and gender. Although adolescence is the period in which the use of non-standard forms is at its peak, females and males develop their use of language differently (Eisikovits, 1998). In Eisikvoits’s study (1981), she recorded fifty hours of conversation among twenty males and twenty females, equally divided into two age groups in Australia. One is a younger group who are thirteen years old on average and the other is an older group who are on average 16 years old. Then she researched percentages of occurrences of three types of non-standard English form: 1) non-standard past tense forms such as seen and done (e.g. He woke up and seen something), 2) multiple negation (e.g. They don’t say nothing) and 3) invariable don’t (e.g. Mum don’t have to do nothing) (Eisikovits, 1998, p.43).
2.4.1. Result and findings
First, younger girl groups used non-standard past tense forms 42% while older girls used it 28%. Younger boys used it 28.9% whereas older boys used it 33% (Eisikovits, 1998, p.44, table 1). It appeared that there were remarkable differences between men and women with respect to their ages. When it comes to female speakers, there is a significant decline with age. On the other hand, among the male speakers, there is no such decline with age.
Second, the percentage of using multiple negations in younger girls is 48.7% whereas that of older girls is 21.7%. Younger boys use it 50.5 % while older boys use it 44.1 %( Eisikovits, 1998, p.45, table 4). Also, the same declining trend was observed with relation to age among females and also men.
Finally, younger girls use the invariable “don’t” 4.8% while older girls use it 6.5%. Younger boys use it 16.7% whereas older boys use it 55% (Eisikovits, 1998, p.46, table 6). It was markedly apparent that using the invariable “don’t” increases with age among the male group. On the other hand, there is no such increase among female groups and a low frequency of using the invariable “don’t” was observed.
As a result of this research, it was shown that women tend to decrease the use of non-standard speech when they become older, but men do not. This comes primarily from their attitude towards society. Girls try to settle down, conform to family and perceive “good behavior” as to having “grown up” (Eisikovits, 1998). On the other hand, boys try to express “toughness” and show an unwillingness to be dictated to.
2.5. The way of talking: Gossip
Women are often said that they are talkative and like gossip. However, men also talk gossip with the aim of expressing solidarity and group membership. Those aims are quite similar to both men and women but there are significant differences of strategies to achieve these aims between men and women (Pilkington, 1998). According to Brown and Levinson (1978), women use positive politeness strategies while men are more aggressive and use impolite strategies. Jane Pilkington (1998) recorded conversations among single-sex groups. The taping produced 250 minutes of data from the female groups and 210 minutes from the male group (Pilkington, 1998). Based on her study, it appeared that there are different strategies and functions between different sexes.
Based on her study, one feature of women’s gossip was the positive involvement that the different speakers had in each conversation. Women tended to support other’s opinion and be more inclusive. Usually one person takes a central role and others contributed to it instead of being a listener and taking turns. For example, this conversation describes the strategies for signaling positive involvement and support for other speakers.
Sal: perhaps next time I see B I’ll PUMP him for information…
May: So B tell me the goss
Sal: I know it’s about six years old but…
May: …(laugh) but I’d forgotten it
(Pilkington, 1998, p.259, e.g.6)
This conversation could be done with only one speaker but Sal gave May indirect permission to continue speaking by ending “but”. Secondly, it was proven that as enjoyment and interest increases, the feedback increases also (Pilkington, 1998).
On the other hand, very interesting features of men’s conversation was long “silence” and much longer pause between turn. Men seem to have lack of response. However, they seem to prioritise enjoyment rather than risk annoying the other party. Here is an example:
Jim: “remember that Wales ad!”
*Pause of about 5-10 seconds*
Jim: “(laughing) obviously nobody does.”
(Pilkington, 1998, p.263, e.g. 12)
It was also obvious that men use direct and specific criticism if they disagree with someone’s opinion.
Similarly, women and men’s strategies are significantly different. Women use positive politeness while the men’s norms are a masculine “shipmate” culture (Pilkington, 1998). Men were not as cooperative as women were. Men show their support by not speaking and waiting whereas women encourage them. Therefore, misunderstandings might occur if members of the opposite sex do not understand their norms because women may expect feedback and support from men while men are not likely to do so. Therefore, to avoid misunderstanding, they should be aware of the norms of each other.
- Issues: femininity and masculinity
It is no surprise that there are significant differences between women and men’s speech in any language. However, sometimes people are too conscious of appearing feminine and masculine. If we think about the use of language by men and women from stereotypes, some issues such as discrimination may occur. There are two problems that might appear. First, people look down on either men or women’s language. Particularly it is likely for women to be looked down upon. For instance, the Japanese word “memeshii” (you are like a woman) indicates that people despise or blame “wishy-washy” or men with a perceived lack of masculinity. On the other hand, the word “ooshii”( you are like a man) indicates that people respect women who are very tough like a man. These differences describe that people look down on women as if they are weak in Japan.
Second, people use one language as a basis for forming opinions or norms. For example, in Japan, people describe “the female lawyer” even though they never say “the male lawyer”. It emphasises female because people use lawyer based the male viewpoint. Similarly, those differences may cause instances of discrimination. If women speak in the same manner men do, people would think they are impolite or rude whereas people do not say anything if men speak in a woman’s fashion in terms of the structures and language used, not to be confused with speaking in a woman’s voice.
This tendency can also refer to the use of some vocabularies. The typical one is the use of “Miss” and “Mrs.” Women are using these prefixes depending on if they are engaged or married or not while men only have “Mr.” Consequently, many feminists tried to reconsider this distinction and made “Ms.” This somewhat shows the stereotype of people’s belief that “women have to get married” (Inoue, no date). Also the National Organization for Women (NOW) states that there are many words that may emphasize gender differences such as “businessman,” “air-line stewardess” and “mankind”. Therefore, they conducted various reviews. However, while many feminists are working to have these distinctions reconsidered, there is a language that is extremely difficult to reconsider because of its deep historical background; Japanese.
- The sexiest language: Japanese
Japanese is considered to be one of the strong sexual languages. However, from the grammatical points, Japanese is in the middle position (Takasugi, no date). Most of the Latin languages have the feminine noun and masculine noun but Japanese does not have those kinds. It is grammatically correct for women to say “ore” (“I” for men) instead of “atashi” (“I” for women). However, women are not allowed to use it because remnants of the once strictly hierarchal society still exist in Japan. “It was only two or three generations ago that women were all but prevented from entering the public area”, said Katsue Akiba (1998, p.300).
Women were supposed to stay home and take care of their children and husband without participating in society. During the World War, there was a phrase “men superior, women inferior” (Dan-Son Jo-Hi) (Akiba, 1998). Even though things changed, people’s perception of women has not changed significantly. Women are still expected to behave onna-rashiku “as expected of women”. For example, women are not allowed to say to anyone even their family, “ totte kure” ( Get it for me) which is an informal way of speaking. Instead, they have to use “Totte”. Also women have to say “itta?” (Did you go?) instead of “itta ka?” ( Akiba, 1998).
This distinction between men and women is not clearly categorised. There are phrases and words that both women and men can use, except men can use both female and male and women can only use female. However, the range of word choice for men is much bigger than women’s choice. The differences between men and women’s language in Japan reflect on the structure of society in Japan. It always ends up in failure if they try to remove the boundary between Japanese men and women though the way of women supposed to talk has changed gradually.
6. Conclusion
It is obvious that there are differences between men and women’s language because of their relationship with people, how they communicate and their norms and conditioning are also different. Although feminists and lot of researchers are attempting to make those differences equal, it is not always necessary to do so unless the differences cause inferior or superior attitudes towards either one of them. If this was occurring, it would indeed be one of the challenges to change our languages and also our belief systems against gender inequality.
References
Akiba K. 1998. Female speakers of Japanese in transition. Language and gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Eisikovits, E. 1998. Girl-talk/boy-talk: Sex differences in adolescent speech. Language and gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Holmes, J. 2008. An introduction to sociolinguistics 3rd ed. England: Pearson Education Limited.
Inoue, H. no date. Onna no kotoba Otoko no kotoba [ Women’s language and men’s language]. Available from: http://www.wako.ac.jp/souken/touzai94/tz9403.html
[Accessed 6 January 2012]
Pinkington, J. 1998. “Don’t try and make out that I’m nice!” The different strategies women and men use when gossiping. Language and gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Poynton, C. 1990. Language and gender: making the difference.2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Takasugi, O. no date. Nihongo byodo keikaku [Japanese equality plan]. Available from:
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/language/nonsexist.html [Accessed 6 January 2012]
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