Language and gender

© Kate Beeching

Table of contents

• Discussion
• Bibliography
• Related links

Discussion

The relationship between Language and Gender is an intrinsically attractive way to engage students' interest in a number of linguistic issues. Men's and Women's Talk have arguably been demonstrated to show differences at the phonetic, syntactic, lexical and discourse levels. Both the personal and political aspects of the topic ensure lively discussion in seminars.

The theme of language and gender is introduced at the UWE, Bristol, as part of our foundation course in Linguistics. In addition, final-year students of our Half-Award in Linguistics may choose an Advanced Sociolinguistics module, which includes 12 lectures and 12 seminars on Language and Gender. Many also elect to complete a Linguistics Project on this topic in the final year. Starting from stereotypes and the early feminist literature - Lakoff (1975) and Spender (1990), preliminary discussions focus on creating non-sexist alternatives for "man" words (see internet link below) and on the possible biological differences which might lead to gender-asymmetrical language (see Kimura, 1999). Students buy Coates (ed.),1998, a collection of seminal works, which serve as essential background reading for lectures and seminars. They particularly enjoy discussion of the relationship problems raised by Tannen (e.g. 1990), illustrated on her (NB American) video. The topic facilitates the introduction of more theoretical notions, such as sociolinguistic stratification (Labov, Trudgill), language change (see Chambers et al., 2002), the SSJ turntaking model (interruptions) and politeness theory (see Holmes, 1995, Beeching, 2002).

Project work on language and gender can involve a variety of sociolinguistic field-work techniques. Data-collection can include the use of recording equipment and the designing and conducting of sociolinguistic interviews or other elicitation procedures, the devising of questionnaires or the judicious selection of written evidence or electronic corpus material. Analysis of data may be at a phonetic, syntactic, lexical or discourse level and is often quantitative, involving the use of statistical packages such as SPSS or CLAN. Recent undergraduate projects at the UWE, Bristol, include a history of the definitions of "man" and "woman" in the OED as well as explorations of gender-asymmetrical aspects of the following : the spread of the high-rise terminal in contemporary Britain, tag questions in episodes of Eastenders, the lexis used in "Soulmates" columns, proficiency in the use of "verlan" amongst young people in France and the length of triage interviews by nursing staff at NHS Direct.

Bibliography

Beeching, K.(2002). Gender, politeness and pragmatic particles in French. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Chambers, J.K., P. Trudgill & N. Schilling-Estes (2002) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Coates, J. (ed.) (1998). Language and Gender: a reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Holmes, J. (1995). Women, Men and Politeness. Harlow: Longman
Kimura, D. (1999). Sex and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Woman's Place. New York: Colophon Books.
Spender, D. (1990). Man-made Language. 2nd. edition. London: Pandora.
Tannen, D. (1992). You just don't understand. Women and men in conversation. London: Virago.
Tannen, D. (2001) He said, she said: gender, language and communication. Los Angeles, Calif.: Into the Classroom Media. 2 video cassettes VHS (NTSC) + instructor's guide.

Related links

For both Resources and Syllabi, refer to :
www.english.tamu.edu/per/fac/bucholz

For the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA) go to:
www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/organisations/igala/index.html

For a ready-made exercise on non-sexist language, try :
www.towson.edu/~loiselle/sexlang.html

Referencing this article

Below are the possible formats for citing Good Practice Guide articles. If you are writing for a journal, please check the author instructions for full details before submitting your article.

• MLA style:
  Canning, John. "Disability and Residence Abroad". Southampton, 2004. Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies Guide to Good Practice. 7 October 2008. http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/2241.
• Author (Date) style:
  Canning, J. (2004). "Disability and residence abroad." Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies Good Practice Guide. Retrieved 7 October 2008, from http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/2241.