1. Sociolinguistics
Chapter 7
Gender and Age

2. Learning Objectives Gender-exclusive speech differences
Gender-preferential speech features
Gender and social class
Explanation of women’s linguistic behaviour
Age-graded features of speech
Age and social dialect data
Age grading and language change

3. Gender-exclusive speech differences
Example 1
Amazonian men and women speak different languages.
Example 2
In Yana, a North American Indian language, men and women use forms of words.

4. Gender-exclusive speech differences
Example 3
In Japanese, men and women use different words.
Further example
In Bengali society, a wife is subordinate and is not permitted to use her husband’s name. A Bengali wife therefore addresses her husband whose name means ‘star’ as ‘heavenly body’.
Exercise 1 4

5. Gender-preferential speech features
Instead of using completely different forms of language in highly structure communities, men and women in urban communities use different quantities or frequencies of the same forms.
Example 4
h-dropping
Further example
In Sydney, men use [f] in words like thing more often than women.

6. Gender and social class
The linguistic features which differ in the speech of women and men are usually features which also distinguish the speech of people from different social classes.
Figure 7.1
Vernacular [in] by sex and social group in Norwich

7. Gender and social class
In every social class, men use more vernacular forms than women.
Women’s speech is closer to that of the men in the same group than to that of women in other groups. Therefore class membership seems to be more important than gender identity. 7

8. Gender and social class
Across all social groups, women generally use more standard forms than men, who use more vernacular forms. 8

9. Pronunciation Norwich walking speaking Men vernacular [in]
Women standard [iŋ] 9

10. Grammar Detroit multiple negation Men vernacular
I don’t know nothing about it.
Women standard
I don’t know anything about it.

11. Vocabulary Liverpool Men vernacular judies last rozzers
Women standard girls
hopeless
police

12. Activity 7.1
Do the women and the men speak differently in your speech community?
Do you see a difference in the use of standard and vernacular forms?

13. Explanations for the difference in language use by gender
The social status explanation
Woman’s role as guardian of society’s values
Subordinate groups must be polite
Vernacular forms express machismo

14. The social status explanation
Women use more standard speech forms than men because they want to claim social status, especially those who do not have paid employment.
Counter-argument
In an American study comparing the speech of women in service operations and that of women working in the home, women in paid occupations use more standard forms.

15. Women’s role as guardian of society’s values
Society tends to expect ‘better’ behaviour from women than from men. Therefore they serve as role models for children’s speech.
Counter-argument
Interactions between a mother and her child are likely to be very relaxed and informal, and vernacular forms rather than standard forms are used.

16. Subordinate groups must be polite
Women as a subordinate group must speak carefully and politely, and therefore tend to use more standard forms.
Counter-argument
Polite speech does not necessarily equate standard speech.
Example 7

17. Vernacular forms express machismo
Men prefer vernacular forms because they carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness.

18. Some alternative explanations
How women are categorised?
The influence of the interviewer and the context

19. How women are categorised?
Researchers in early social dialect studies often used the women’s husband’s occupation as their major criterion. Therefore miscategorisation often occurred and that explained the speech behaviour of the women.
Example 10

20. The influence of the interviewer and the context
The interviewer as a middle-class well-educated academic
The interviewer as man
The formal context

21. Gender as the primary factor for speech variation
Although gender interacts with other social factors, such as status, class, role of the speaker in an interaction, formality of the contexts, etc, there are cases in which gender is the primary factor accounting for speech variation.
Examples
Tyneside study Figure 7.2
Reading study

22. Age-graded features of speech
Use of swear words decreases after people begin to have children
Slang is the linguistic prerogative of young people

23. Activity 7.2
Do you see differences in language use in different age groups?

24. Language variation in Hong Kong
Meaning
Standard form
Vernacular form 我 I
ŋo5 o5 你
you
nei5
lei5 國
country
gwok3
gok3

25. Age and social dialect data
A common pattern shows that the use of vernacular forms is high in childhood and adolescence.
The usage steadily reduces as people approach middle age when social pressures to conform are greatest.
Vernacular usage gradually increases again in old age as social pressures reduce.
Figure 7.3
Figure 7.4 Detroit and Appalachian study

26. Age grading and language change
Stable variation
Language change in progress
Bell-shaped pattern
Steady increase or steady decline